School of Swords and Serpents Boxset: Books 1 - 3 (Hollow Core, Eclipse Core, Chaos Core)

by Gage Lee

  Either Hagar had special permission to come and go from the School whenever she pleased, or her teachers and friends knew better than to question her absences. It was frustrating, and I vowed to get the truth out of her.

  If I ever found her again.

  And then, a month after I’d last seen her, the warden showed up at my doorstep.

  “Stop asking so many questions about me,” she said sharply. “It takes a lot of work to hide a missing student, and you’re not making it any easier.”

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  “Not important, and also not for you to know,” she sighed. “The only thing you need to know right now is that we’ve got a new assignment.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “We go on a mission, then you go missing for a month? I thought you were hurt. Maybe dead. You can’t just drop off the face of the world.”

  “I don’t want to have this conversation in the hall,” Hagar said, glancing up and down the empty corridor. “Inside.”

  She didn’t say another word until we’d reached the cottage. Then she took a seat on the edge of a chair in my sitting room and crossed her hands on one knee.

  “First off, I didn’t go on a mission, you did,” she said. “I stayed right here, in this chair, and watched. It was very intriguing. The analysts who looked over the footage noted that you did something very unusual to the spirit—”

  “You said something about a new mission?” I interrupted. The last thing I wanted was to go into what I’d done with my Eclipse core.

  “Yes, in about fifteen minutes,” she said. “This one is going to be a little more intense, okay? We have a line on some vital material we need to recover. If we can get our hands on this, we’ll leapfrog past the heretics. It will accelerate the elders’ timetable by months, Jace. Unfortunately, it’s in a secured facility behind a wall of core sensors.”

  “And you want me to sneak in and steal the stuff?”

  “Not exactly.” Hagar leaned forward. “You’ll clear a path for the recovery team. Neutralize the guards, disable the core sensors, and get out.”

  “What kind of guards?” I asked.

  “You worry too much. They’re not heretics, just hired goons.” Hagar’s eyes burned into mine. “I’ve seen you fight, Jace. You’re the champ. This will be a piece of cake.”

  Maybe she was right. Three months of fighting day in and day out had left me wired for combat even now, almost three months after the challenge had ended. I’d beaten the best contenders each city could offer. None of them had been able to take me down, and few of them had even landed a single blow. I doubted any rented security team would fare any better.

  “What else do I have to worry about?”

  “Cameras in the halls,” Hagar said. “But we have a jintech helmet to hide your face from them. We’ve got a source on the inside who has patched us in to the security net. I’ll be able to control the cameras and watch the guard patrols, though. Shouldn’t be a problem. We can talk about all this on the way. Let’s get you on the transport ahead of schedule.”

  “Transport?” I asked. “What are you—”

  An angry hum rumbled through the air over the cabin. It grew louder by the second until the walls began to shake, and the lake’s surface jittered and jumped outside the window. It felt like my teeth were about to shake out of my head.

  Hagar grinned at me and rushed outside. I followed her and was immediately pummeled by the downdraft from some sort of bizarre helicopter. The vehicle descended to the shore on the far side of the lake. A set of stairs flopped out of a hatch on its side and landed at the end of the bridge.

  The vehicle was thirty feet from nose to tail. Its body was long and slender, pointed at the nose, and flared out into a wide tail that supported a pair of vertically mounted rotors. Four mobile struts that extended from the top of the craft held the horizontal rotors, which still spun with furious force. Clearly, they were in a hurry to get moving.

  The strangest thing about the vehicle, though, was its color. The entire craft was coated in a dark material that was difficult to look at for more than a few seconds. It was as if my vision slid off it without absorbing any details.

  Weird.

  “There’s your ride,” Hagar shouted. She rushed across the bridge ahead of me, and I hurried to catch up.

  By the time I’d boarded the vehicle, Hagar had already thrown herself into a seat and grabbed hold of the armrests. There was a thump from behind me as the stairs retracted and the hatch closed.

  “Grab a chair,” Hagar warned.

  And not a moment too soon. The instant I dropped into a flight seat, the angry buzzing became a roar and the transport lifted into the air. It took off with a sudden burst of speed that made my stomach lurch sickeningly. There was a bone-rattling bout of turbulence, and the deafening roar of the engines vanished.

  “Where’s the rest of the team?” I asked with a glance at the empty seats.

  “They’re coming in on a different transport,” Hagar responded. “Stop worrying about the details.”

  “What if—”

  “Let’s get you kitted up.” Hagar unbuckled her safety harness. “It should be a smooth flight from here on out. Unless you keep asking me questions I can’t answer. Then I’ll toss you out the hatch.”

  She jumped up and rummaged through the storage compartments attached to the walls of the transport. She found a black plastic package and dropped it on the seat next to me.

  “Get your robes off, and put that on,” she said. “I promise not to look.”

  The inside of the transport had ten seats, and they were all empty except for the one I’d taken. Each of the comfortable chairs had a flight harness dangling from its shoulders, and a few of them had heavy steel rings mounted to the ends of their arms. Cargo containers lined the sides of the roof, and other compartments occupied the spaces between the seats. The interior was lit by a thin strip of light overhead, and there were no windows. A bulkhead toward the transport’s nose had a heavy, secured door in its center.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  Hagar rolled her eyes at me and moved toward the bulkhead. She twirled her finger over her head.

  “Hurry it up,” she said. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

  The plastic bundle held a simple black jumpsuit that unfolded as soon as I tore the packaging. The material was stretchy, with plenty of pockets on the thighs and chest, along with carabiners sewn directly to the fabric above the waist.

  “Seriously, don’t look,” I said.

  Hagar snorted.

  I stripped out of my robes and tossed them on the chair to my right. The new suit fit like a glove. It was tight where it needed to be and still loose enough to allow an easy range of motion.

  “I’m dressed,” I said.

  “Good to know,” Hagar said. “We’re getting close.”

  That announcement sent my thoughts in a dozen different directions. Where were we going that was within a few minutes’ travel of the School? And how had they flown the transport into my private quarters?

  Before I could ask any of the questions, Hagar returned to me with a black helmet under her arm.

  “This will hide your face.” She rapped on the helmet’s mirrored full-face visor. “It’s also got a full communication suite, encrypted, of course, and it can take a pretty good knock without cracking. We’re using this instead of the eye-snapper this time.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Not your concern,” she said. “Focus up. Here’s a picture of your guy. I’ll put his apartment number on the HUD in your helmet. Focus on this, okay?”

  “I guess,” I said. “This is all happening pretty fast.”

  “That’s how it goes.” Hagar grinned. “Don’t get distracted. We’ll be back at the School before you know it.”

  “I’m not distracted!”

  “Get your shoes on,” Hagar said, pointing to the low boots I’d discarded when I took my robes off. “We’re five minutes out
.”

  “From where?”

  “Stop asking so many questions,” she said.

  I slipped my boots on and tightened the laces. Hagar was right. The less I knew, the less chance there was I’d let something slip and screw it all up for the elders. I took a deep breath, cycled jinsei into my core, and purged the tension and anxiety aspects from my core on the exhalation. I cleared my thoughts and let all the questions go.

  “Ready,” I said.

  “Good.” Hagar took a seat and fastened her harness. She pointed at a rail over the hatch. “Hang onto that. We’re coming down.”

  With that, the transport’s nose tilted alarmingly toward the ground, and it spun into a sharp circle. The sudden motion made my stomach jump into my throat, and I hung onto the rail for dear life.

  “Helmet on,” Hagar called.

  I grabbed the black armor from the seat and pulled it down over my head. There was a disconcerting moment as the cheek and neck pads tightened to secure the helmet in place. In the time it took for the helmet to adjust itself to the shape of my skull, the visor shifted from an impenetrable black to transparent.

  A red circle floated in the center of my vision, obvious but not distracting. Smaller red triangles dotted the edges of my field of view. When I focused my attention on any of those, small words appeared next to them: cargo compartment, electrical access panel, restraint system, fire retardation nozzle, emergency oxygen mask.

  I turned toward Hagar, and the circle flickered green.

  She was now wearing a helmet, too, and a small keyboard rested on her lap.

  “All right, champ,” she said, “when the door opens, move out. I’ll be right in your ear.”

  Her words were tinny and distant through the helmet’s speakers. I decided I liked trading slightly less clear audio from my handler for the eye-snapper’s headache.

  The transport descended slow and silent, and a moment later I felt a faint bump as we touched down. The hatch opened, and the stairs tumbled down with a ratcheting noise I could barely hear above my own breathing.

  “I’m out,” I said and raced down the steps.

  My Eclipse core stirred the instant my feet hit the flat tarred roof the transport had landed on. The skyscrapers that surrounded our landing spot told me we were in a big city. Most of the windows I saw were dark, and the sky overhead glowed with ambient light that blotted out the stars. I instinctively looked up for the bright flares of an overcity’s lift crystals, but the only lights in the sky came from the city itself.

  I tried to think of any big cities without an Empyreal presence. Nothing came to mind.

  “I’ve highlighted your door.” Hagar’s voice disrupted my thoughts. “Once you’re inside, give me a moment to secure our tie into the security cameras.”

  My HUD pointed me toward a door set into the side of a small cube of aluminum that jutted from the roof’s top. I darted around ventilation fans and jumped over ductwork to reach it. I cycled jinsei as I ran, purging any stray aspects of tension or worry from my aura to keep my mind as smooth and calm as the lake that surrounded my cottage.

  “The door is unlocked,” Hagar informed me. “You can tell by the green light just below the handle. If you run into any doors where that light is red, do not try to open them. You’ll set off an alarm.”

  “Good to know.” The door’s knob twisted easily in my hand, and it pulled open on silent, well-oiled hinges. “I’m in.”

  The small maintenance room I’d entered held a collection of basic tools on a pegboard against one wall, a tattered binder filled with yellowed paper on the workbench beneath them, and a set of stairs that led deeper into the building.

  “One second, let me get these cameras oriented.” A few seconds later, Hagar broke the silence. “All right, you’re clear down to the tenth floor. I’ll let you know if that changes. Move quickly.”

  My heart raced as I sprinted down the squared spiral staircase. My Eclipse nature was restless inside me, a tiger pacing its cage. I’d felt like this before almost every fight in the Five Dragons Challenge, and I’d never gotten used to it. There was a hunger in me now, a taste for violence I didn’t want to indulge.

  It dogged me all the way down the stairway, a constant clamoring to punch and kick and break things that just wouldn’t leave me be. The dark urge knew there was a fight coming, and it wanted blood.

  “Hold.” Hagar’s voice dragged me out of my thoughts. “There’s a guard outside the door to your left, ten paces. Take him down, now.”

  “Take him down?” I said. “Why can’t I just wait for him to move—”

  “Now!” Hagar’s shout rang in my helmet.

  The panic in her voice broke through my hesitation. I glanced at the door’s handle, saw the green light, and eased it open into the passage beyond.

  The Borrowed Core technique forged connections to a dozen rats as I raced up behind the guard. Their breaths became mine, and their bestial aspects filled my aura. The serpents twitched inside me, ready to burst forth and do my bidding. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, the rush of adrenaline felt good.

  It felt right.

  The guard wore a boring khaki uniform, complete with a heavy utility belt on his waist that held a holstered pistol on his right hip. A tactical harness covered his torso in a web covered with items I didn’t recognize. He held a walkie-talkie in his left hand. I’d need to deal with that before he had a chance to call for help.

  The guard heard me when I was less than a step away. Time slowed as he spun on his right heel, one hand dropping toward his holster, the other hand lifting the walkie-talkie to his mouth. The color drained out of his face at the sight of an intruder so close to him, and panic aspects leaped into his aura in a sparkling flurry.

  If the guard’s hand reached his holster, he’d have a weapon trained on me in the next second. If he got that walkie-talkie up to his mouth, there’d be a bunch more weapons trained on me not long after that.

  My serpents exploded out of my aura. The first to emerge darted toward the guard’s left hand, a chittering swarm of shadows that closed around his wrist in the blink of an eye. He yelped in surprise, and my serpent yanked his arm toward me.

  Hard.

  Off balance, he couldn’t recover in time to defend himself. A right backfist knocked the walkie-talkie out of his grip and into the wall, where its black plastic housing shattered. My left hand slammed into his shoulder, knocking his hand away from his pistol’s grip. Before he could recover, I drove my knee into the guard’s gut hard enough to bend him double.

  My opponent’s breath shot out of his lungs, and he fell on his tailbone, hard. My Eclipse nature wanted me to end the man’s life to ensure he wouldn’t cause me trouble later. If he raised an alarm, the whole mission would be in jeopardy.

  Instead, I drove my fist into the side of the man’s head, just behind his ear. The jinsei-amplified attack put the guard’s lights out, and he flopped onto his side, unconscious. His breath stuttered, then resumed. He’d have a terrible headache when he woke up, but at least he would wake up.

  “Pick him up,” Hagar ordered. “There’s a storeroom down the hall to the right. Hide him in there.”

  The guard and all his gear were heavier than I’d expected, and I fed a bit of jinsei into my back to make hauling him around easier. The unconscious man groaned as I carried him and started snoring when I leaned him against a stack of toilet paper rolls in the storeroom. I ran back to collect the pieces of his broken walkie-talkie and deposited them in a nearby trashcan.

  “One down, twelve to go,” she said.

  “Twelve,” I hissed with surprise. “That’s insane.”

  “Good thing for you, then, it’s only three.” Hagar snickered. “Lighten up. Your next target is straight ahead and then left. Stop at the intersection. Wait for my go.”

  I hustled down the hallway, relieved and irritated at the same time. It was easy for Hagar to joke about this mess, as she was safely back on the transport. I, on
the other hand, was neck deep in enemy territory. If anything went wrong, I’d pay the price, not her.

  I wondered how heretics would deal with someone like me, then pushed all those thoughts aside. I’d seen too many TV shows where sneaking around ended up in torture. I pressed my back flat to the wall and cycled the nervous aspects out of my aura. No one was going to torture me. I’d get out of here in one piece.

  “Wait for it,” Hagar said. “Wait for it.”

  The guard walked with his head down and didn’t even see me hiding in the shadows as he strolled along his rounds.

  I reached out when he passed by my hiding spot, hooked an arm around his neck, and jerked him into the hallway with me. He tried to elbow me, but his webbed harness got in the way.

  I slapped his hand away before he could reach his weapon, then pulled the gun from its holster and tossed it down the hall behind us. The whole time I kept up the pressure on his throat, my bicep and forearm digging into the sides of his neck. His struggles grew weaker, his grunts and wheezes less frequent, and finally he went still. Pinching off the blood supply to the brain hadn’t killed him, but he and his friend would be eating aspirin together to soothe their savage headaches.

  “No time to hide this one,” Hagar said, her words hurried. “Your next target changed direction. He’s coming from the left. Twenty seconds out.”

  “Great,” I growled.

  “Something’s wrong,” Hagar said, panicked. “There’s another coming from the right.”

  My Eclipse nature surged to life, its animal aggression screaming for me to slaughter these foes and finish the mission. It showed me a vision of the future, blood splattered across the hallway, dead men at my feet.