Pivotal (Visceral Book 3)

by Adam Thielen

  Desre screamed and pushed him to the ground before it was ready. He loosed the fireball at an angle into the ceiling above the bedroom door, destroying the drywall and sending a rain of fire into the apartment. Desre saw Dan rising to his feet. She ran past the mage, out the door, bounced off the opposing wall with her hands and sprinted down the corridor to the stairs. The mage sat up, stared wide-eyed at the fiery ceiling, then looked to the cyborg.

  “Get after her!” he yelled.

  Nurat obeyed, stumbled outside the room, then jogged on wobbly legs down the hall. Desre was no athlete, but the adrenaline drove her at great speed down the stairs. As Nurat moved, he became surer of his footing, and started to pace the psion, then began closing the distance.

  Desre made it to the lobby first, where a haggard-looking businessman leaned over the front desk to flirt with the attendant. As she ran toward him, Dan entered the lobby after her. The psion concentrated on the man. He was looking at the attendant, and so was Desre in her mind’s eye. What’s going on to my left, she thought for him. Then, I’ve got to stop that man. The businessman turned with a look of surprise on his face, but he otherwise did not move. Desre tried again. Have to stop him, now!

  At that, the man dove at Dan as Desre whizzed by him. With his extra weight, the businessman managed to tackle the brute over the top of one of the lobby’s couches. Desre broke away and pushed the doors open. Her legs burned, her arms burned, and her head ached with frost. She rubbed at her hair and face.

  The lobby doors opened to a wide sidewalk and two-lane with cars carrying passengers at high speed. The automated systems of the vehicles tracked the presence and movements of other cars, pedestrians, and animals large enough to cause an accident if struck in order to swerve out of the way safely, or in rare instances decelerate to avoid a collision.

  The lanes were marked with dead-zones along their center, where a blockage could occur that required more than swerving to one side of that lane. A car that spotted such a blockage would send a warning signal to the vehicles behind it that it was about to slow, and then resume when the path was clear. Of course, there were situations where an automobile maker did not want to be left liable, and so the ability to manually steer in the case of an emergency or breakdown of the system was still provided on modern vehicles and, depending on the territory, one passenger may be required to sit in the driver’s seat while the car is in motion.

  And so Desre found herself facing traffic zipping past her, its dim headlights streaking through the night air. She looked at the dead-zone strip and carefully approached it. As she did, the cars coming from the left began to edge toward the center line to avoid her while at the same time signaling corp security that a crazy person was standing in the road. In between cars, she leapt across the zone, causing traffic to momentarily slow, then swerve to the other side, passing close to the edge of the sidewalk. The psion moved to the center of the street, her feet resting on the line dividing the lanes.

  Desre turned back to face the hotel in time to see Nurat emerge with his caved-in eye socket with torn bits of metal exposed. His head darted up and down the sidewalk, brow scrunched down toward his nose. He did a double take at seeing the psion in the middle of traffic. He slid a pair of magnetic cuffs from a utility pocket on his belt and pressed the button to open both ends.

  Somer doubled over and wheezed. I am in no shape for this, she concluded, lying down on the pavement, then folding her arms across her chest. The psion closed her eyes and projected her aura into the air above, looking down at the scene. Her physical body became cold, and she began to shiver.

  Dan saw her lie on the ground and while he was wary of automated traffic, knew he must pursue. He carefully stepped into the lane. Cars veered toward Desre, such that she felt air snap past her shoulders with tires coming within millimeters of her skin. But the psion wasn’t there; she was hovering above. She searched for her target as cars continued to pass, peering behind the windshield of each.

  The cyborg leapt across the dead-zone, resulting in a chain of deceleration in that lane. Desre took a close look while the cars moved slower. She peered further down the street when she found what she needed. The cars adjusted their path to avoid the man in their way by veering toward the sidewalk, resuming their one hundred kilometer-per-hour travel. As Danliti Nurat crouched next to the psion, her disembodied aura whispered into the ear of a passenger who was asleep in the driver’s seat. Take the wheel... take the wheel. Take the wheel!

  The man obeyed. His eyes still shut, and his consciousness regressed, he followed her instructions, grabbing the steering wheel and overriding the automated system. He remained in the center of his lane whereas every car before him had veered over. Dan had no reason to believe he was in danger, nor did he have peripheral vision in that direction. The corner of the vehicle’s bumper slammed into the cyborg’s hip.

  His body skidded across the road and rolled over a dozen times before stopping. All cars in the area issued an emergency stop, including that of the poor sap who hit him. Desre stood, rubbed her cold forehead, and then examined the cyborg from a distance. His chest continued to heave, but red abrasions decorated his exposed skin with his clothing ripped to shreds.

  Desre looked around at the scene, then thought of Kate. She ran over to Nurat and stood over him. His good eye was half-shut, and he did not seem to notice her, so she kicked him in the leg, ready to bolt if necessary. He looked at her, still confused by the events that led him there.

  “You will never catch me!” she screamed with as much confidence as she could muster. “I’m putting on a collar and I’m disappearing. You will be the one to blame. Do you understand what I’m saying? You let your buddy up there know right now, that if the hacker girl dies, I’m gone forever. Take her alive, and maybe I’ll take her place.”

  Dan looked at her, seemingly more confused than before. Desre kicked him again. “Do you understand? Tell him!”

  The battered man nodded. He tried to roll over, but the pain in his hip was too great. He considered Desre’s words as he watched her flee. He knew that due to the jamming he had no way to tell Lane to stop, and even if he did, the mage may not listen. He called Chantech ops and notified them, hoping they could sweep the area and scoop the psion up before she found a place to hide, and also so that they could send a team into the hotel to recover the hacker girl.

  The fire in the room spread quickly. The foamcrete skeleton behind the walls would likely survive the blaze, and so construction contractors aware of the material's resistance to heat were able to skimp on most other fire retardants. If the fireball hadn’t directly hit one of the ceiling-mounted sprinklers, the fire might have been short-lived. As it was, breathable air was quickly converted into smoke while Kate considered her options.

  She closed the door to the room and made for the window with her glass cutter. Instead of trying to make a pretty-shaped hole, she drew an X with the laser, then smacked the center with the butt of the tool. The window held. Kate grabbed her pistol. The readout on her HUD told her she only had three rounds. She fired once and a section of the window shattered outward. The hole was narrow and jagged. She fired again, breaking out another section.

  The new exit was still small, even for someone petite, but she decided to save her last bullet rather than make the hole larger. She grabbed her duffel of drones and stuffed it through the hole. It tumbled down the side of the building, landing among the bushes below.

  The Chantech mage heard the sound of the gunfire and glass, and moved quickly to the door controls. Kate had her head through the window when she heard the sound of the door. She turned around with her gun aimed.

  If I rush him, she thought, I can get inside his barrier and shoot. But before she had the chance, Lane’s hand shot forward and a bolt of lightning appeared between it and Kate’s pendant. Meant to deliver a debilitating if not fatal amount of current, the pendant attracted and absorbed it. It quickly grew in brightness while the bolt was sustained, then fl
ashed, bathing the room in blinding white light.

  * * *

  The mage Taq Jones had spent a great deal of his time doting over the condition of his beloved wife. So much so that the exhaustion of it forced him to sleep or meditation whenever he wasn’t dosing himself with vampire blood, a substance that temporarily provided a boost to a mage’s casting prowess, allowing him to use Drew’s neural markers to repair segments of Kate’s synapses.

  For almost three years, he had denied himself the company of others, and with brief exceptions, that of his own wife. Though he was very close to her through most hours of the night, the encounters were clinical, not intimate, and Kate often slept alone, shopped alone, and trained alone. Drew moved in to fill the void. Not in an attempted coup, but instead so that the ruse could continue. He kept her company, kept her busy, and challenged her mind even as it continued to deteriorate.

  Taq was not blind, but a love that has lasted decades grants one a new kind of sight, as well as a detachment from older notions of jealousy and feelings of ownership. He watched them become close. He saw what even they did not. And at any time, he could have stepped in and warned Drew about the fragility of human emotion. His silence became an unspoken consent to wherever their relationship took them. If Kate could be happy while Taq kept her on her feet a little while longer, then it was worth it.

  While he knew that her absence from his care could accelerate her condition, Taq also knew that what she wanted was one last adventure. Her times as an active field agent alongside her husband were the happiest and most fulfilling of her life. He had to rise above the prison of his fears and let her go. Not that he could have stopped her physically, but he could have guilted her. He could have yelled at her, berated her, or mocked her for thinking she still had any business globe-trotting.

  Had he tried hard enough and sacrificed a little more of their love, Taq could have shamed her into staying. As he lay quietly, feigning sleep the night before she departed, he mused to himself that perhaps, just perhaps, this mission was her destiny. Perhaps he had brought her to this point to do something big. He allowed himself that indulgence.

  With her outside of the range of his micro-surgeries, Taq could finally rest and let the toxic residues of nocturnal blood work its way out of his system. He could make a little time for the finer things in life, even if only for a few days. On his third afternoon off, he pondered to himself what he should make of his new freedom. What great things should I accomplish? he considered. Perhaps I should start my memoir.

  As he sat down on his recliner, optimally placed in front of a smart wall, he waved the screen awake, then compressed the view into two dimensions. The legendary mage logged onto the public web and visited the old stomping grounds of a message forum. He opened instances for various topics ranging from interactive gaming to politics. Taq inhaled deeply, knowing what he must do with the day. He was going to shit-post, shit-post like there was no tomorrow.

  He carefully composed his first collection of witticisms in response to various assertions about the quality of one of the few video programs Taq had made time to watch. But before he could send it out into the world to raise the ire of said show’s detractors, the room went dark, and the mage slumped over in his chair.

  Episode 13: The Damned

  Taq’s consciousness followed his aura as it traveled through the Ethereal plane. Typical Ethereal travel looked a lot like moving through a hazy version of the facade, the nickname given to the physical plane. However, this jaunt was not typical. As an aura moved further from its originating body, the mind’s ability to perceive spatial geometry waned. Taq perceived it to look much like what he imagined outer space to be like.

  Like space, it was filled with stars that zoomed past Taq from a great distance. When one came close, it took on the shape of a person, and the color of the aura told him the nature of the entity. Mundanes had one color. Body mages, often labeled warlocks, had another. Other mage classes were labeled wizards or sorcerers, and they each had distinctive auras, as did vampires and psions.

  At first, Taq was surrounded by these lights, mostly mundane, but as he was pulled along, he left the population of the West Coast behind and those auras faded into the darkness. He traveled across an ocean of black with one pinpoint of light in the distance. The mage felt the pull of the void, an abyss that calls to all minds and auras, a place all consciousness went whether through death or sleep or foolish planar travel. In the Ether, willpower determined success, and Taq willed himself to stay afloat.

  He passed small clusters of auras, likely people on boats or small islands, as he flew across the globe. The desolation relented, and again he rejoined a star field of human population as his aura entered the region previously known as China.

  The light that beckoned him grew in size and intensity, and the geography of the world condensed into a haze of fields and streams and streets and structures. Kate, thought Taq. He grew nervous, wondering what he was being pulled into. Whatever it is, he thought, we’ll get through it.

  Taq flew into the light, and a disorientation took hold as his mind adjusted to an unfamiliar home. He smelled the smoke. He sensed Kate’s mind, silently watching from a distance. He felt a burning sensation on the back of his neck. He opened his eyes and saw a man he knew to be a mage because Kate knew it. The man standing in the doorway of the bedroom had a confused look on his face.

  To the average mundane, the woman in the room was still that same woman. Kate remained Kate. To an awakened such as Lane Marquez, a new figure superimposed itself over her, wavering in its opacity. The face that appeared in front of the hacker’s, while time-worn, was recognized by Somer’s lieutenant.

  His expression turned grave. “Taq Jones.”

  “Correct,” announced Taq, examining the spreading fire, the sweat drenching Lane’s hair, and his weakened barrier spell.

  “Possession,” concluded Lane. “Not an easy spell.” Marquez himself eyed the blaze with some concern. The heat around both of them was immense, and as mages that generated heat around their brains during spellcasting, it made their job more dangerous than it already would have been.

  “Not remotely,” Taq confirmed. His right hand reached behind his neck, while his left hand signaled to Lane to wait. He grabbed the pendant, still warm, and pulled it from his neck and dangled it in front of him. “This helps.”

  “Ahh, an enchantment,” nodded Lane. “So this woman,” began Marquez, connecting the dots, “is the infamous Kate… I see.”

  “I’ll admit,” said Taq, “I don’t know what she’s done, but it doesn’t matter. It’s time for you to walk away.”

  Lane grinned. “Can’t do that. Won’t. Don’t even want to. I grew up with stories of the great Taq Jones. They said you could master any spell. That you could slip without dying. But the only thing I hear mages in the field say today is that you are a fraud!” There was palpable disgust in Lane’s tone. “That the stories are propaganda. That your brain is mush. No,” he said, shaking his head. “I will not walk. I’m going to destroy her body. And then I’m going to follow you into the Ethereal plane to finish the job. You will die tonight, and I will be known as the one who killed you.”

  Taq realized that there was nothing more to be said. He clutched Kate’s pendant to his chest and continued holding his other palm forward. Marquez held one hand behind him and one forward, both palms facing the floor. Lane waited as the fire continued to choke their lungs, hoping to counter Taq’s first move. However, the heat proved too much, and he knew he had to act. He swirled his hands in a circle, infusing the flames near Jones with Ether, coaxing them larger.

  As the fire crowded him, Taq’s right hand shot forward, throwing the polonium pendant at Lane. As it flew he reached down for Kate’s handgun. When the metal collided with Lane’s barrier, the spell collapsed and electricity arced to the mage’s body, giving him a jolt. Taq lifted the gun and fired.

  Marquez saw him go for the gun, and after the jolt, his mind en
tered flight mode. He dove out of the room as Taq fired. He scrambled to his feet, hiding out of sight. Lane conjured a smaller shield, a translucent amber oval in front of him, and peeked into the room, but Jones was nowhere in sight. The mage peered into the Ether to search for his adversary’s aura. He spotted it in front of him as before, but a story lower.

  Before he could react, the floor gave out under him, caving into the room below. Lane fell onto his side amid the debris, with more falling onto him. Acting quickly, he released a wave of force around him, throwing the debris away and causing the building to rumble. He sprang to his feet with his shield still active. Taq stood before him, ready yet again, but this time with less fire and more drywall dust.

  Again, Marquez waited, hoping to force Jones into a move. He slowly drew a dagger from his belt and crept forward. Taq decided to cast. He placed his hands in front of his neck, overlapped with each other, the palms facing toward Lane. A cold fog appeared and swirled around his arms, snaking from his elbows to his wrists and then forming a pointed ice shard.

  Lane positioned his shield to defend while at the same time readying another lightning bolt. He loosed it before Taq finished casting, but the bolt passed through Jones with no effect. Taq released his shard. It traveled at the speed of a bullet with the inertia of a pound of water. Lane understood what had happened, but he had no time to move. The shard pierced his skull behind the ear. His body dove forward, dead before it landed facedown.

  The mirror image of Taq dissolved into the air, and the real Taq, standing just outside the room, doubled over in exhaustion and pain that Kate would soon feel. His head pounded as sweat slid down his face. He was in the body of someone who had never cast a spell and had never hardened themselves against the side effect of Ether manipulation.