by Jamie Davis
Quinn headed into the test room, following Phillip’s instructions to the letter. She sat down on the VR exam couch, picked up the headset, and lowered it over the crown of her head. Once it was in place, she lay back, staring at the ceiling and waiting for Phillip’s order to lower her visor.
Something different happened in the sequence this time, though. Phillip came in and stood next to her. He lowered her visor for her, then began waving his hands as she’d seen the other two monitors do when they took control earlier.
He sketched shapes and figures in the air over her with two fingers outstretched on each hand. He muttered a chant under his breath at the same time.
Darkness started folding inward from the edges of her vision. Quinn struggled to keep listening and focus on retaining control, but a sudden, sharp pain stabbed through her mind as a mental yank at her consciousness pulled her away.
Phillip’s chanting faded, and everything went black.
Chapter Twelve
Quinn’s eyes popped open.
She stood in a crowd of people. They moved around her, and a few even bumped into her as she stood at the curb near the corner of a busy city street.
A corner of her mind recognized the area. She was only a few blocks from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor shopping district.
Quest orders for the mission rang clear in her mind as if she’d just read them. She and the other hunters were charged with tracking down a small group of evil magic users. According to the mission briefing, they used their mind-control spells to force victims to shift their bank accounts to the mages’ control.
Quinn started moving to find her targets, then paused. Her orders were clear, and yet when she thought about her mission and the mind-control magic, something didn’t ring true.
She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. On its face, everything seemed as it should be.
When she looked down at her outfit, it was her usual urban hunting gear. Jeans, t-shirt, black leather jacket, and black knee-high boots. With her left hand, she checked the placement of her Bowie. This time she wore it in a shoulder sheath for concealment, which hung hilt-down beneath her right arm inside the jacket, relying on a leather band that snapped in place to hold the blade in place.
Everything was as it should be, so why did she feel like it was all wrong?
Quinn considered her mission info again. There was only a loose description of the mages they hunted, but she wasn’t worried. She had the distinct impression from the briefing info that if she got close enough, she’d know them.
She scanned the crowded sidewalk in both directions on her side of the street and spotted others from her hunter group, including Taylor, Fergus, and several others. They were spaced about fifty yards apart, with Quinn in the center. Judging from the way they all craned their necks, they, too, were searching the crowd for their quarry.
Turning her attention back to tracking down the targets, Quinn spotted a group of five people across the street on the opposite sidewalk. It took her a few seconds to understand why they stood out from the others hustling past them. The group stood back to back, arranged so one of them faced in every direction.
The crowd surged around them as the quintet held their ground. Then the group began moving away from her.
As they did, Quinn realized they all held hands as they slowly moved through the crowd.
A system message pinged her.
Targets acquired.
Quinn managed to catch Taylor’s eye as her friend scanned the crowd. Quinn nodded in the direction of the quintet of mages. Taylor scanned the crowd for a few seconds and then nodded, a big grin crossing her face.
The other hunters noticed Quinn and Taylor crossing the street. There were five hunters, one for each of the targets.
They wouldn’t escape, not now that the team of hunters had found them.
Quinn and the others moved in, speeding up to a fast walk and twisting and dodging as they worked their way through the crowd to approach the mage circle.
The three women and two men shuffled down the street away from the hunters. All looked young, perhaps in their twenties or early thirties, dressed like everyone else in casual attire.
They still hadn’t noticed the approaching hunters, although their defensive arrangement showed they expected trouble.
Quinn smiled as she got closer. She saw all of their mouths moving and realized they must be casting some sort of a spell.
If it was a concealment and protection spell, it was a pretty poor one since the hunters had found them easily enough.
At the thought of protection magic, an icy-cold spot pressed against the center of Quinn’s chest. She started to reach for her t-shirt to see what it was, but shook it off as the sensation passed. Her hand dropped back to her side.
The hunters got closer. This was going to be easy. The mages still hadn’t noticed them.
Quinn started to take another step forward, but something wrapped around her legs, and she fell to the pavement.
She pitched forward so suddenly that she barely caught herself before her head slammed into the concrete.
Wondering why it felt like someone held onto her legs, Quinn rolled to her side and looked down. Inch-thick green and brown vines twisted around her ankles, sprouting from a crack in the sidewalk.
Quinn growled in anger. The mages had spotted the hunters after all. She should have been more careful. It had been a foolish move on her part, one that might cost her a chance at her first kill.
Sitting up, Quinn drew her Bowie. She slashed and hacked at the vines even as they continued twisting around her legs, holding them together.
Quinn shifted her attack to focus on where they grew out of the sidewalk. This was taking too long. Her Bowie was razor-sharp. It shouldn’t be having this much trouble with a few vines.
It took precious seconds she didn’t have to hack through the tough stalks. The mages were getting away.
Once she cut the last of the vines at the base, they ceased tightening around her ankles. She managed to unwrap them, freeing her feet.
The nearby people walking about their daily tasks paid no attention to the woman wielding a big knife and struggling with magical vines on the sidewalk. They merely walked around her, with only a casual glance in her direction.
Finally free, Quinn stood and scanned the crowd.
The cluster of mages had disappeared.
Quinn craned her neck to see above the heads of the people around her. There was no sign of them.
There was no sign of her hunter team, either. Had they already begun the chase and left her behind after she fell?
She got her answer when Fergus’s head popped up above the crowd not far away.
Taylor’s face appeared nearby, followed by the other two team members.
Quinn relaxed. They’d all been taken down by the same spell. The mages had spotted the team.
With a nod to the others, Quinn scanned the area ahead, looking for the mages again. Fergus, who was off to her right, shouted and pointed farther down the street.
Quinn looked that way, searching amidst the people walking in that direction. She picked out the circle of spell casters right away. They were moving a lot faster now, their circle broken as they dodged the other pedestrians.
“After them,” Quinn shouted to the others, but the order was unnecessary. The rest of the hunters had started running down the street after the escaping targets.
This time, the mages didn’t hide the fact they saw the hunters approaching. Eyes widened as five heads swiveled in their direction. Quinn readied herself to try to dodge any incoming spells.
When nothing came at the charging hunters, she wondered if they had any other spells to use.
Their escape plan must have changed because the circle broke apart, each ducking and disappearing into the crowd.
Quinn cursed and pressed onward. Other pedestrians hindered her progress as they hustled past, oblivious to the hunt. She eventually reached the location wher
e the group had split up, and she turned in a circle to look for any signs of the missing mages.
Fergus and Taylor arrived next, scanning the crowd as they stopped beside Quinn.
“Where did they go?” Taylor asked.
“They can’t have gone far,” Fergus said. “Let’s split up and move in different directions.”
Quinn nodded. It was as good a plan as any.
She pointed to the right as the final two hunters joined them. “I’ll go this way. See you all back at the training center.”
The others laughed, enjoying the chase.
The five hunters wove through the crowd as they took off in different directions.
Quinn moved at a fast walk as she scanned the area ahead. As she did so, a new ability icon popped up in her HUD. Not recognizing the icon, she mentally clicked it as she kept moving.
A menu with a selection of things she could do popped up. One of them flashed brighter, indicating a new ability.
Tracking
Quinn wasn’t sure how such a thing would work on a busy urban street, but it was as good an option as any at this point. She had no idea where any of the targets were.
Activating the tracking skill, Quinn waited to see what happened. She didn’t see anything at first, but then she happened to glance down and spotted a thin, glittering golden trail weaving through the crowd ahead of her and angling to the left.
Quinn started to move along the trail, going slower than before as she tried to navigate the crowded sidewalk while following her targets. As she did, the golden thread began fading.
Realizing her quarry must be getting farther away, Quinn picked up speed.
She began jogging down the crowded sidewalk, weaving around people and then vehicles as she followed the trail across a busy street. She turned down another sidewalk perpendicular to the first until she reached a broad open area with a grassy field. It was a small park.
The crowd thinned out here, helping her keep the trail in sight. Quinn smiled and moved into the park. She stopped as she reached the grassy area.
Looking along the trail, she spotted one of the women mages moving at a fast walk.
The woman glanced behind her and must’ve spotted Quinn because she turned and bolted across the park toward a tall chain-link fence. As she approached the fence, which had to be over six feet tall, the woman waved her hands in a broad, sweeping gesture.
To Quinn’s amazement, the woman took a last leaping stride and cleared the fence with ease. She landed on the far side and kept going without missing a step.
Quinn took off after the woman at a run. When she got to the fence and jumped, she reached up to grip the top of the fence and pulled herself up, bending at the waist over the top and swinging her legs over to follow the rest of her body.
On the way down the other side, Quinn twisted her body and landed on her feet in a crouch. The mage had widened the distance between them. She had already crossed the next street, running for her life.
Quinn knew the woman was headed toward a more crowded area of the city near the harbor. If she kept pulling away from Quinn, it would easier to evade pursuit amidst the people there.
The glittering tracking trail had nearly faded to nothing. A countdown timer appeared in her HUD, indicating that her tracking ability was running out.
Quinn brought up her stamina bar as she’d done the day before. Drawing on her stamina, Quinn drained twenty-five percent again and dropped the surge of extra power into her strength. Her legs moved faster as the additional strength manifested as speed. Once again, Quinn took off after her target.
Moving at double her normal speed, Quinn gained on the woman, finally catching up with her as she took a shortcut down an alley behind a street full of businesses.
The woman spotted Quinn and turned to face her attacker. She shouted, holding her hands out as she backpedaled, pleading for mercy, “No, please.”
Quinn ignored her, diving forward and tackling her to the ground.
The woman grunted in pain as they landed.
A rush of air hit Quinn’s face as the hard landing knocked the breath from the woman’s lungs.
Quinn smiled. This was going to be so easy.
Straddling the mage’s waist, Quinn reached inside her jacket to draw her knife. Raising the blade high over her head with both hands clenched around the hilt, she prepared to plunge it into the woman’s heart.
Quinn would silence this evil mage forever.
“Please, stop,” the woman’s voice croaked out as she tried to regain her breath. “You don’t have to do this. I’m not your enemy.”
Quinn hesitated, slowing the descent of her knife.
Something in the woman’s voice tickled a memory in the deep recesses of Quinn’s mind. The memory hinted there might be some truth in her words.
Quinn shook her head, trying to clear the disconcerting thoughts. She had to get this kill, or she’d lose the incredible opportunity she had working at VirSync.
She raised the knife again. A stabbing cold in the center of her chest distracted her this time. Quinn took her right hand off the dagger’s hilt and brought it down to her chest. What the hell was causing that pain?
Quinn’s fingers traced the oval of a small disc of freezing cold metal beneath her shirt. She reached into her collar to pull out a thin silver chain, from which dangled a pendant etched with runes.
As soon as she saw it, her mind cleared. It was as if someone had pulled back the curtain hiding the truth. Quinn was herself again, in complete control. She realized how close she’d come to killing this woman.
The woman beneath her regained her breath and voice. She shoved Quinn and shouted for help, almost dislodging herself from beneath her assailant.
Quinn sheathed her blade and leaned forward as she clapped her hand across the woman’s mouth
“Hush. I’m not going to kill you.”
The woman stopped struggling, but the wild fear in her eyes told Quinn she didn’t believe her.
Well, Quinn thought, she wouldn’t believe it either in the same situation.
“Look, I was under some sort of spell. Do you understand what that means? I didn’t know what it was I was doing. I didn’t remember who I really was.”
The woman nodded.
“Good. I’m going to take my hand away. Don’t scream. We don’t want to draw attention to us. It’s too likely one of my companions will hear you and come to investigate. I might not be able to stop them from killing you if that happens.”
Once again, the woman nodded, and Quinn took her hand away.
The woman twisted her head to look up and down the alley. “How did you find us?”
“I’m not sure. Look, it’s a long story. All I know is, I sort of woke up across the street from you and your friends.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. How could you wake up in the middle of a busy street corner like that?”
“I don’t have time to explain it. Hell, I don’t understand it,” Quinn said as she stood and helped the woman to her feet.
As the woman brushed herself off, Quinn looked back up the alley toward the main street.
Taylor came into view, walking down the sidewalk. She crossed the end of the alley.
Quinn ducked and pushed the mage into a gap between a building and a detached garage beside it.
It might be enough to hide them from view. Quinn peered around the corner of the garage.
Taylor kept walking without looking their way. Quinn watched her until she’d disappeared from sight.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Quinn said, turning back to the woman she’d pressed against the garage’s cinderblock wall. Her mind spun through options to escape the other hunters.
The woman shook her head. “I don’t know where to go. Clearly, you people can find me wherever I am.”
An idea came to Quinn. “I have an idea about who we can turn to for help, but you have to trust me. Do you have a phone? I don’t have mine with me.”
The woman nodded and reached into her pocket, pulling out a phone and handing it to Quinn.
Taking the phone, Quinn crouched and struggled through her still-foggy mind to remember the number Clark gave her.
“Who are you going to call?”
“If I can remember his number, it’s a friend who should be able to get us both out of this mess.”
Quinn dialed, hoping there was a solution on the other end of the line.
Chapter Thirteen
Quinn waited while the phone rang on the other end. She hoped Clark picked up, even though he’d said it was someone else’s number.
The line was answered, and Quinn’s heart sank as she heard a woman’s voice ask, “Who is it?”
“I don’t have a lot of time. My name is Quinn Faust. I need to speak to Clark. It’s urgent. Do you know him?”
“How did you get this number? Clark shouldn’t have given it to you.”
“He told me this was a way to get hold of him. Can you reach him or not?”
That was a brief pause. Quinn checked the alley’s entrance again for any sign of Taylor or the others while she waited for an answer. After a few seconds, the woman finally answered. “I can. What do you want me to tell him?”
“Give him this number and tell him to call me back right away. It’s a matter of life and death. “
“Fine.”
The woman hung up.
The mage or sorceress or whatever she was crouched in the alley next to Quinn, wringing her hands. “So, what now?”
Quinn leaned forward again, looking up and down the alley for any of the other hunters. She kept up her lookout as she answered, “Now we wait for someone to call us back.”
Quinn glanced at the detached garage beside them, then moved into the alley and tried lifting the metal garage door. It rattled when she yanked on it, but it didn’t open.