Zero Sum

by B. Justin Shier

Carrera nodded. “I am not oblivious to this fact.” He adjusted another knob on the display. “That is why I attempted to capture you in the first place.”

  My jaw slacked. “Excuse me?”

  “You are my providence,” Carrera said with a grin. “You first came to my attention when you killed one of our low-rung suppliers. That you managed to cast such a spell in a mana dry desert intrigued me—but I couldn’t capture you outright. I knew Kit would guess at your talents as well. You see, Kit knew my aim—but not my means. If I had kidnapped you, it would have telegraphed the nature of my cast. I couldn’t give Kit the time to think of a counter. I couldn’t risk discovery. So I first attempted to lure you to the Nostophoros’ institute in St. Louis. But Kit intervened. He feared the Nostophoros were aware of your talents as well. He had an acquaintance manipulate your financial aid package to divert you.”

  I swallowed. Rei mentioned her mother had intervened…

  The aging mage adjusted the buttons of his tuxedo jacket and walked over to me.

  “When that effort failed, I tried to intercept you in transit. I must admit, I underestimated that muddy-blooded filth. I thought employing two trolls and a mage was a tad overkill—but apparently not. I would have tried again—but then Sadie informed me that the DEA was delivering you to us on a silver platter. The duchess was to manage you,” Carrera glanced at my neck, “but obviously that plan failed as well. I had all but given up hope when you stumbled up here on your own.” Carrera smiled. “You must indeed be my providence, Magus Resnick.”

  I looked down at the complicated array. Silver etchings swept out and arched around in a thousand different directions. Even the nature of the magic exceeded my comprehension. “I’m sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? I have six months of experience and no mana. Why the hell do you care about me?”

  “Because I am but a mage.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I draw circles. Build conduits. Direct mana. I can craft majestic tapestries of light and sound, but mana is my one and only fuel. That is the basis of the paradox Fremont left behind. A magus would need a tremendous amount of mana to undo Fremont’s work, but by destroying our one and only leyline, he denied us that very mana. It took me seventy years of unending toil to finally uncover a solution…”

  Carrera engaged another button and the thin ceramic coating crumbled off the massive obelisk. My mouth stood agape as the shards shattered on the ground. The bland grey exterior was nothing but a shell. Hidden underneath it was a mammoth, ruby-red crystal.

  ”ACT,” I said with a shudder. “The entire obelisk is made of ACT…but Albright said that stuff is poisonous.”

  “Kit said that?” Carrera chuckled. “No, this substance is not poisonous. At least, not in the classical sense. See for yourself. Employ your auraception.”

  I examined at the massive red obelisk with my second set of eyes. Wisps of the initiates’ auras were being drawn into the column. Carrera wasn’t immune, either. The column was sucking in his mana too.

  Then I looked closer—and gasped.

  “Stars above. That stuff isn’t just drawing in mana. It’s stripping away your Ki. Your…life.”

  “As I said, young man, I am but a mage. Mana is all I can command. But after seventy years of unending toil, I discovered a way to bridge the gap between mana and life. It was a struggle that took me back to the very dawn of history. During those faded ages, there were creatures far darker and more terrifying than any we face today—and they commanded magiks that relied not just on mana. Most of the scrolls were lost, destroyed by time or those wise enough to burn them, but I managed to piece a few of their techniques together.” Carrera gestured to the silver etching on the floor. “This is my Sistine Chapel. It is an array that can reset the flows, an array that can rescue my country from oblivion.”

  I swallowed. “You’ve built an array that spends human lives.” I felt dirty just standing on it.

  “Correct. As you have observed, this obelisk can attract life just as a magus attracts mana. The powerful Ki of the young magi above us will merely enhance the obelisk’s drawing power. When the obelisk’s strength is at its zenith, I will cull the lives of every last man, woman, and child celebrating below us. Their life energy will rise up to the tower, inexorably drawn to the attractive power of the obelisk. But before that energy can reach the obelisk, it must pass through the magical array at our feet.”

  “Like a drift net catching fish…”

  “Exactly! The obelisk will never taste a drop of their lives. Every last soul will get caught in my array.”

  I shook my head at the genius of it. Carrera’s Ki couldn’t work with life energy, so he’d designed a machine to do it for him. The initiates would power the obelisk. The obelisk would draw in life energy. The array would trap that energy. And the many nested spells etched into the cement would somehow repair the damage Fremont had caused, restoring the flow of mana to Mexico. And it’d do it all for the low, low cost of a few hundred thousand lives. I sucked in a breath and shuddered.

  “You’re a monster.”

  “A monster?” Carrera glanced at my neck. “Then we have something in common. But this monster is giving you a choice.”

  Carrera walked up to the ruby red obelisk and touched it. I watched as tiny pieces of him were torn off and sucked into the column. Every cell in his body was losing a bit of what made it tick.

  “Do you know the true name of this substance? I cannot imagine that Kit or Madam Eikhorn would dare trust anyone with such knowledge—especially not a being such as you.”

  I shook my head. An uneasy sensation was rising in my stomach. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.

  “Then I will give you some remedial coursework. First, a question: Name for me the land of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar.”

  My first thought was Go-fuck-yourself-istan, but I bit my tongue. The real answer was in the first few pages of any world history textbook. “Babylon. They were kings of Babylon in Ancient Mesopotamia.” Ham and Neb sorta invented the concept of civilization.

  “And what was the name of the Babylonians’ greatest building?”

  Another easy one. “The Tower of Babel. The Bible says the tower was torn asunder by the Hand of God. Apparently the inhabitants got a bit cocky and dared to transcend the heavens. Sorta like someone else I know.”

  Carrera laughed. “Correct, but you are repeating a common mistranslation. The Babylonians did use the word ‘anu’ to describe the heavens, but that is not the word’s only meaning. The Imperiti translators dismissed the other as nonsensical, but an ‘anu’ also means ‘frame.’”

  I scratched my head. I was a bit hazy on the concept of frames.

  “And there is another error in modern Christian texts. The Babylonians were not torn asunder by the Hand of God. They were torn asunder by the hands of men. Men and women of a particular race. The tribe has had many names throughout history. These days, we Magi refer to them as the Vita Paciscor.”

  I swallowed. “The Life Dealers.” Now I really had a bad feeling about this.

  “And now you are ready for the story behind this stone.” Carrera strode over to the edge of his array and stared into the silvery sheen of the frameshift. “The Babylonians were followers of the Draco, an order of beings from beyond our frame. The Babylonians were the first to encounter the Draco. The first to master their tongue. The first to strike a deal with them. The Babylonians agreed to provide the Draco with certain resources, and the Draco agreed to provide the Babylonians with certain powers.”

  “What kind of powers?”

  Carrera turned to me and smiled. “The unimaginable kind, of course.”

  I frowned. Why did I even bother to ask?

  “This reddish crystal is called draconite. It is the raw material for all ACT. It was one of the many gifts granted to the Babylonians by the Draco. It eases the strain of spellcasting, deepens one’s mana reserves, and makes for far quicker casts. My organization has o
nly scratched the surface of draconite’s potential, but it has allowed our inferior force to fight your Department toe-to-toe. And so it was in ancient times. Thanks to tools like draconite, the Babylonians became the dominant culture on the planet.”

  “And these ‘resources’ that the Draco wanted…they demanded our entire supply of Chunky Monkey ice cream, didn’t they?”

  “Children. The Draco coveted children.”

  I nodded. “I guess ice cream wasn’t invented yet.”

  “The Babylonians harvested the lives of their adversaries to feed the Draco. Those outside their kingdom faced the very real possibility of extinction.”

  “But we’re here talking Mexican vengeance, not baby belly futures. I presume someone opened a can of whoop ass?”

  “Mercifully, yes. In the 16th Century BC, the unfathomable occurred. Despite the insurmountable odds, a small band of Vita Paciscor managed to convince one of the few remaining armies of men to mount a frontal assault on the city of Babylon. The force moved swiftly. They abandoned chariots, employing a new breed of horse that permitted mounted cavalry. And they wielded strange weapons forged of an element called iron. The brazen assault caught the Babylonians off guard. Before the enemy’s main armies could even be raised, the Vita Paciscor had breached the Tower of Babel, penetrated to its core, and laid their hands on the draconite stores inside.”

  “Yay humanity?”

  Carrera grew quiet. He walked back across the array and gazed into the ruby-red glow of the obelisk.

  “Long ago, Mesopotamia was a flowering river valley. Now it bears a striking resemblance to this land—barren and dead. Your distant ancestors were responsible for that change.”

  “Um…” I fidgeted in place. “Sorry?”

  “They unwrought it. The Vita Paciscor unwrought the draconite with their bare hands.”

  I wasn’t clear if that was good or bad, but Carrera certainly looked excited.

  “Young man, mana is attracted to life. Draconite captures life energy, and thus attracts mana artificially. But the Vita Paciscor didn’t use the draconite to aid in their casts. They accessed the life energy stored in the draconite directly.”

  “Wait a second.” I looked up at the five stories worth of draconite rising above me. “Are you telling me—”

  “Yes. To restore the Great Western Flow, I require a carefully designed array, an obelisk of draconite, six-or-so Tier 4 magi serving as primers, and at least two hundred thousand human sacrifices. It took me seventy years to gain the proficiency needed to complete the array. Seventy years and hundreds of millions of dollars. The same task would require fifteen minutes of your time—and require nothing but the palms of your hands.”

  “Excuse me?” I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Carrera was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

  “I am but a mage, young man—but you are not. You are Vita Paciscor.” He touched the obelisk again, and more of his life dumped into it. His hair was greying before my eyes. “For the obelisk to have grown to this size there must already be enough life energy inside to execute this cast. It is power that you can extract without harming a single human life. You can circumvent the sacrifices, bypass the need for murder, and drive the life energy of the obelisk directly into the array. You may—my young Vita Paciscor—meet both my needs and yours.”

  I gritted my teeth. This was utter bullshit. I could barely cast straight, and Carrera wanted me to rearrange the layout of mana on the planet? Why not ask me to move the Pacific Ocean while he was at it? This guy was bonkers, and he was going to bring us all down with him.

  “Carrera, I believe I told you to bite me.”

  Carrera met my glare with a weary set of eyes. Raising his hand, he slapped me across the face.

  “You are a Life Dealer, Dieter Resnick. I watched you transmute blood to mana with my own eyes. I give you this simple choice: You can stand by and watch or stand up and act. Have no doubt, young man, I will claim the lives around us. I will do it with great sadness—but zero hesitation. My country is dying. It is the only path left for me. I will succeed at this cast or die trying. But you hold another option. You could put your left hand on that blasted stone. You could extract the energy inside the draconite, draw it within you, spin it about your Ki, and discharge it into the array below us. In Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Salt Lake and Mexico City, my associates have prepared partner circles for the cast. The circles are charged. The broken strands of the Great Western Flow are harnessed. All sits ready, awaiting our call. The only question remaining is which call they will receive. My call, or yours.”

  “But…” In moronic desperation, I looked left and right for help. But there was no Rei, or Jules, or Albright to come and help me. I was alone. I was absolutely and totally alone.

  “Young man, our time is short. I will give you thirty seconds to decide.”

  +

  What do you do when you don’t know the right answer? Where do you turn? I was trapped inside Carrera’s circle. I was within his sphere of influence. He had me dead to rights. Was his proposal a trap? Was I missing a crucial detail? The not knowing, it bore a hole straight through me.

  What did I know for certain? Carrera didn’t need me to complete this cast. If Jules was confident that Carrera could pull off a grand spell, then so was I. Yet if I were to believe Carrera’s words, the six initiates above me, my friends fighting outside the frameshift, and the countless thousands below us all needed me to act. But I was dealing with a mind mage. Could I trust that I wasn’t being deceived?

  Rei had tried and failed to glamour me, Anna had bumbled it, and fighting off Carrera’s WIP team had been a cinch. That was why the DEA had selected us Lambdas in the first place. We were all near immune. And there was the duct-taped initiate above us. Carrera’s glamour failed on her.

  I turned to the last trick up my sleeve. I closed down my other senses, opened my Sight fully, and directed it at Carrera. Maybe he was lying…My jaw tightened. Carrera’s aura was a firm, unmoving grey. I knew that sight. It was utter conviction—the same color I’d observed while watching the devout in prayer. My head spun. I saw no trap, no attempt at deception, just a man willing to thin the costs of his actions. Carrera was committed to succeeding at his task, but seemed willing to do it with the lowest number of casualties as possible.

  I hated to admit it, but Carrera’s position almost sounded reasonable. Mexico had gotten the royal shaft. How many lives had been twisted or snuffed because of Fremont’s actions? How many futures ruined? The Magi of the South deserved to have their own leyline, their own fortifications, and their own defenses. What right did we Americans have to deny them that? The only thing I couldn’t agree with were Carrera’s methods—and here he was giving me an opportunity to correct them.

  The six initiates spun helplessly above. The conscious one had closed her eyes in a grimace. I re-examined the impenetrable barrier surrounding us, bit my lip, and let out a sigh. There was no way around it. I bore responsibility either way. My inaction guaranteed mass-murder. Acting as Carrera’s proxy risked what, exactly? My own life? True, taking in such a large amount of energy might kill me, but in tonight’s heinous equation, did a single life even register? I rounded back on the Big Bad. Not acting guaranteed the deaths of almost everyone I knew. Actor or spectator. Risk the unknown or stand aside and watch.

  As usual, I just couldn’t help myself.

  It was like Jules was always telling me: I was a chancer to the core.

  “Alright,” I heard myself say.

  Carrera smiled.

  I twisted inside. Carrera knew he’d won—and that set off a fire inside me. I searched for my voice, and when I found it, it sounded a bit fuzzy to my ear.

  “We’ll do it,” I whispered. “We’ll cast your damn spell. But let us be crystal clear—if you’re bullshitting us, if so much as one person dies because of what you’re asking us to do, we’re going to suck the life from your limbs until they’re nothing but nubs. Then we�
�re going to drop you in a hole for safekeeping and take a little trip. We’re going to kill every last one of your line, collecting their heads as we go. When our bag is nice and full, we’re going to come back for another visit. We’re going to make a soup of your bones and drench the rancid sludge with lye. Do you hear us, Diego Escutia Carrera? If you fuck with us, we shall take away your everything. We will make it as though you never existed.”

  Carrera took a step backwards.

  “Do you understand me?” I growled.

  His smile had cooled. “Mr. Resnick…you remind me of another. Very well. I acknowledge your terms.” He waved a hand, and I was suddenly free to move. “Approach the obelisk. Your body will know what to do.”

  I eyed the giant humming column. Uncertain, I took a few cautious steps forward. The deep hum of the draconite grew louder. The sound was both familiar and foreign to my ear. It pushed away the sights and sounds around me. Entranced by it, I reached out to touch the stone—and my hand passed straight through it. The stone’s song changed timber, and for the first time in perhaps eons, the massive chunk of draconite shuddered alive.

  What are you doing, my child? Hara’s voiced boomed from inside my noggin.

  “Oh. Hey, Hara. Nothin’ much. Just tapping into this giant stone-o-death and re-arranging the world’s manaflows with my body. How about yourself? Anything new?”

  Child, I am doing the same as you. I am merely wondering as to your aim. As I said before—

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. ‘You and I are one.’ But I figure that’s about to change. I figure you and I are about to become a billion and one itsy-bitsy pieces.”

  I am merely concerned for your welfare. Our body can manage the forces, but the mind is still lacking. All will go white. Consciousness will slip, and the flows will run wild. The mind requires more training before it can withstand such formidable flows. Perhaps, after another hundred years of—

  “Hara, the mind needs to grin and bear it. I have to do this cast, and I have to do it now.”

  The voice in my head was silent—which was a strange experience—I wasn’t accustomed to waiting for myself to answer.