by K. Gorman
Footsteps sounded outside her door. She tensed, almost immediately chided herself for the reaction, then narrowed her eyes on the door and allowed her tension to run its full course.
The trickle of the fountain dropped off as her Element activated and lifted the water into the air. It glittered in the lighting as it slipped toward her.
Fuck Aiden. I’ll be as paranoid as I damn well please.
A knock sounded. “Sophia?”
Shit. Roger. She let out a breath and gave the door a withering look. Usually, she was happy at how odd and creepy he sounded when he moved, but only when it wasn’t her being creeped out.
She blew out a sigh and dropped the water back in. Teddy and Drake skittered to the edge of the basin, one hiding under a staged fallen branch and the other hoping no one would notice his splotchy white body against the black bottom of the tank as he lingered on the opposite side from her.
“Come in.”
Roger pushed the door open and stepped in. She relaxed back in her chair and angled it toward him as he crossed the room, taking in his appearance. He moved more like a cat than a person, with a smooth, sinuous gait that translated into a near-silent walk. Something the military had trained into him.
He’d always been like that. After nearly a decade, she’d grown used to it. Besides, he dialed it down around her.
He stopped a few yards away and raised an eyebrow at the pond.
“A bit twitchy, are we?”
So he’d noticed. It was hard to hide things from another Water Elemental.
“Shouldn’t I be?” she asked.
He didn’t speak, but his calm, level look was answer enough.
She sighed and swung her chair to the left, gesturing for him to sit. “How are things?”
“Good.” Roger took a step closer, surveying his options. After a few seconds, he sat down on a flat piece of bare rock at the lip of the fountain. “Fornell fixed that leak by the mall, and the tile’s almost done in Bayside.”
Bayside. That always caught her up. Such a funny name for an underground apartment building.
The shield’s graph fluctuated on the monitor beside her, and she tapped a few keys for a better look. Roger watched her work.
“Caught a few vandals in the Core,” he continued.
“Yeah?” Sophia squinted. Aiden was right. She’d spent too much time looking at this screen. The symbols weren’t focusing quite right.
“Same ones that did the mural in the Westside tunnels, by the mall.”
“The one with the punk peacock?”
“Post-punk, they’ve informed me.”
“I hope you bought them some paintbrushes.” She gave the graph one more glance-over, dimmed the screen, and swung her chair back toward Roger. “Tell me about Aiden’s new apprentice. What’s she like? She used your Water?”
“She did.” Roger took a step closer, surveying the options. His hands rested neatly on his knees. “I could feel her use it, too—a pulling sensation. Do you know what I mean?”
Sophia nodded. That was normal for a transfer sigil. “She’s not an Elemental. She’s only borrowing power at this point.”
Which was something exciting in itself. Thus far, she’d only heard of new-world magic mimicking their own—whatever Aiden’s apprentice had, it was even newer. A mutation of some sort. “Aiden slapped a transfer on her, which is why she could access your Element.”
She had to hand it to Aiden—putting the transfer sigil on her had been ballsy. Back in Lür, the old world, they’d only been used between Mage and machine—a means to infuse Lost Tech with magic. She hadn’t thought it would work on a human.
“How old?” she asked.
“Fifteen, I’d guess. Maybe older.”
Hmm. Young-ish. That was good. Better for learning. “What’s she like?”
Roger looked up from his phone. “I have never seen someone so skittish in my life.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow. “Had fun, did you?”
Sometimes, she wondered if Roger’s assassin-like persona was entirely the result of his training. Some of it had to be innate. His family was normal, though. As far as she knew, none had gone anywhere close to the military. His father was a cake decorator, for God’s sake.
Drake made a slow circle around a clump of underwater reeds, his mottled Dalmatian coloring catching the light in a metallic sheen. Roger peered down as the fish’s mouth broke the surface near where he sat, begging for food.
Sophia passed him the bottle of fish pellets. “Have you heard much about her story?”
“Nothing.”
Oh, well. She supposed the Underground gossip network didn’t work that quickly. The girl had only been down here once. “What’s her name again?”
“Mieshka.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow. “Russian?”
“Sounds like, though I haven’t heard that particular name before. Perhaps her parents got creative.”
“Perhaps,” Sophia said.
Roger’s phone buzzed in his hand. For a moment, the edge of his wrist sheath poked out from under his cuff as he tilted it up, scanning the message. “Something’s up on south Johnson.”
His eyes met hers, as if looking for permission.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded. Clothing rustled when he stood up. His shoes made a quiet tap across the floor as he left. At the door, he paused.
“Try and get some sleep. You look like hell.”
He left.
Sophia made a face at the door. Then, with another sigh, she spun back around to the monitor.
No change in the graph. She winced as its colors jangled in her mind. At this point, whatever she did would be like beating a dead horse—she’d run every calculation she could think of, gone through every textbook she’d saved to her hard drive. Both she and Aiden were trained engineers, even if their education had been cut short. There was nothing more they could do about the energy crisis.
But the engine itself was another story.
She slid off the chair and kicked it back. Its wheels clacked over the tiles as she rolled over, putting her back to the soft padding she’d installed on the ground directly underneath the engine. Her work gloves were already there, along with the wrench she’d been using earlier that day. She put them on, gripped a pen light between her teeth, and got back to work.
Sophia had thought of becoming a mechanic once, back before her old world had ended. She used to help her brother fix jetbikes and charge the batteries they used for their levi-cars. She found the work soothing. It forced her to focus on what her hands were doing and nothing else—like some sort of productive, grungy meditation.
She worked in silence. Only the whir and bubble of the fountain’s filtration system permeated the room. The engine vibrated softly against her fingertips as she focused. Magic crackled between them, invisible until it passed through the skin of her gloves and into the engine’s Lost Tech hull.
After a few minutes, her back relaxed against the pads. She worked from right to left, close to far, her shoulders growing stiff with effort.
Sophia performed maintenance every week on the engine. With Michael’s disappearance, that frequency had become daily.
When she was finished, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Bright spots of magic flashed on the backs of her eyelids. The retinal burn looked strangely like the Lürian language she’d been using to cast.
She frowned. Roger was right. She needed sleep.
The wrench clicked onto the tiles where she set it down, and the room’s cool air slid over her sweaty hands as she removed the gloves. For a second, she considered dunking them in Teddy and Drake’s tank.
No. She wouldn’t pollute their habitat with Mage sweat and engine grime. It wasn’t that far to the washroom.
She rolled out from under the engine, using her office chair to lever herself up.
But, as she stepped toward the exit, the lock clicked on the door.
S
he froze.
“Roger?”
Silence. Her heart thumped in her throat, and her fingers dug into her arm like claws. She squinted at the door.
Was she hearing things?
Shit, she was being silly. Paranoid.
Sophia relaxed her grip and forced herself to breathe. Four half-moon imprints stuck into her skin where her nails had dug in. The water shivered in the fountain, sensing her mood. She stilled it with a thought. Teddy and Drake wallowed in the back-most corner of the tank, tense and alert.
Now her nerves were spreading to the fish. Great.
She grimaced and glanced back to the toolkit open on the floor. There was only so much maintenance one could do to a machine, and she’d been overdoing it every day this week. Pushing the same spell into the same conduit would only make things worse in the long run, no matter how mindless and soothing it was for her. She’d just have to find another way to vent her stress.
She bent down, picked up her wrench, and put it back in the toolbox. The box made a nice clunk as she slid it back under the engine, out of sight. She turned toward the door.
Behind her, the engine growled. Energy surged.
She spun around. A new screen emerged on the console. This time, it did not display the shield graph. Only one sigil pulsed brightly in the dim room.
Danger.
Sophia didn’t hesitate. She threw her fingers out and pulled.
Water shot from the tank like a geyser, striking her face with part of the spray. It enveloped the room in a liquid flurry. She spun with it, pushing it into the corners, throwing it against every surface in the room. Magic snapped across her skin, the sigils glowing with a shifting aquamarine color. Her ears roared with sound. Cold soaked into her clothes, dragging her down. Her ponytail snapped around.
She paused, water coating her face. Muggy air wetted her lungs when she breathed.
Silence fell, broken only by dripping sounds. The room was a thick shroud of fog, tinged blue by the screen behind her. Above, the fluorescents hummed, flickered, and went dark.
She slipped out of her shoes. Wet tile soaked her socks as she stepped to the right. Her hand brushed the wall, and a single sigil glittered on the back of her knuckles like a homing beacon, feeling the water moving in the pipes she’d laid behind the drywall years ago. Her last line of defense.
She held her breath, listening, waiting.
Something clunked in the middle of the room, close to where she’d left her shoes. A black smudge rolled into the edge of her vision, just visible through her fog. She squinted, adrenaline pulsing through her blood. It had a cuboid shape, was roughly a foot high, and its indestructible black sides matched the Maanai that her engine was made of.
A single character glowed on its side.
“Fuck,” she said.
Pipes punched through drywall on her command, metal wrenching as she broke their joints and forced the water out. Cold sprayed into the air and flooded the floor. One pipe flew across the room, broken from its retaining structure through sheer force. It vanished midway across, landing with a clang somewhere on the other side and rolling. With the water gathered around her, she snapped a series of sigils across her hands, raw and powerful—
—but when the magic hit the black box, its Maanai siding ate it. The spell died. Her power cut off.
This time, she didn’t swear. She backed away, watching, waiting.
The sigil on its side pulsed twice, then grew. It illuminated the fog, reading her Element and adjusting itself, burning bright as it cleared the fog in the room. Water hissed and bubbled as it hit the black box’s sides.
Then, when the box’s light touched Sophia, it consumed her, too.
Chapter 14
Warm air rushed over Mieshka’s face and shoulders as she entered her apartment, and she snapped her head up, her attention going almost immediately to the yellowish light that tanned the off-white walls of the hallway.
Dad’s up?
Farther down, more light came from the living room and kitchen. She shucked her shoes at the door, curled her cold toes into the carpet, and walked down the hall. Behind the couch in the living room, the small dining table was set. She found her dad in the kitchen.
“Is that spaghetti?” she asked.
A pot boiled on the stove, froth bubbling under the lid, and the oven was making the ticking sound it made when it was cooking something, which made her suspect they were having meatballs, too. He reached into the cupboard and retrieved a packet of sauce. As he read the label, he adjusted his glasses with an oven mitt.
“I should have started with this first, shouldn’t I?”
“Probably.” She shrugged her backpack onto the couch. The pile of laundry was gone, too. Except for her clothes.
She’d take that hint later.
“How was the job shadow?” he asked.
Leaning her butt against the couch’s back, she smiled. “I got to do two types of magic today.”
The pot lid clattered as the froth spat over its brim. He swore, snatching the lid off, and fumbled the sauce packet to the floor in the same movement.
“Two?” He said, distracted. “Is that even possible?”
“Apparently. He drew this mark on me so that I could transfer magic from him. I made some fire.” She watched her dad bend in front of the oven, staring through the little window. His glasses slid down his face.
Mieshka walked in, washed her hands in the sink—careful to clean around the transfer mark—and reached over her dad to empty the packet into the pot and stir the contents in. She held out her left hand so he could see the mark.
Heat blasted her arm as he opened the oven door. “Has my daughter turned into a pyro?”
“A what?”
“Pyro. Greek for fire, short for pyromaniac.”
“Oh. I don’t think so.”
The baking tray made a metallic hiss as he dragged it out across the racks. He balanced it on the dormant left-hand burners. Meatballs sizzled on the tray, their outsides singed. Perfect.
She caught the noodles as the pot over-boiled again. Steam rolled into her face.
“Careful.” Dad took the spoon from her. “Here, you sit down. You said there were two types of magic?”
She took position against the door frame. “One of his soldiers took me Underground. Did you know there’s a whole city under there, full of refugees? Anyway, it was nice. We had tea at a café, and that’s where I did the second type of magic. The Water Mage’s apprentice met us there, and I used his power through the mark.”
Something had changed about him while she’d talked. He frowned at the stove.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He scraped the meatballs off the pan with a knife. “You went Underground?”
“Yes. Under the city, there’s—”
“I know, Mieshka. I—”
“You know about the Underground?”
“Yes. I do.” The knife screeched against the pan. He put it on the counter. His glasses flashed in the overhead light as he turned to her.
By the wall, she tensed. “How do you know about the Underground?”
“Heard all about it when I was looking for housing. We were lucky to get this place, Mieshka. Very lucky.”
So that was why Jo had been surprised she hadn’t known.
“What’s wrong with the Underground?”
“It’s not really… a good place, Mieshka. Not a place for girls like you.”
Anger came too easily these days. She took a deep breath. “Seemed fine to me. Jo goes down there all the time.”
“Joe’s a soldier, isn’t he?”
“Yes, she is. So was Mom.”
She immediately regretted the words. His grip on the spoon tightened. She knew that symptom well. Spaghetti hissed in the quiet, the metronomic kitchen clock ticking into the tension.
“Watch the sauce,” she said.
He turned away from her. His right hand held the edge of the counter for support.
“There’s nothing wrong with the Underground,” she said, holding it to the bridge of her nose.
“There’s plenty wrong with the Underground. There are gangs, Mieshka. I won’t have you running around with gangs.”
“There’s gangs aboveground, too.”
“Can you learn magic without going Underground?”
No. Aiden seemed pretty connected to the place. Her lip curled, teeth gritted together.
Her silence was answer enough for him.
“I don’t want you going Underground, Mieshka.”
She swung her backpack onto her shoulder and headed for her room. Her face felt hot. The door clicked shut behind her, and she slumped her backpack against it.
Her mother smiled up from a frame on her dresser. Mieshka kicked a shoe across the floor. It hit the wall with a thunk and landed out of sight.
The anger didn’t go away so easily. It built on her like a swarm. Hot tears slid down her cheeks. She sank to a squat and hugged her knees to her chest.
The day had gone so well before this. It was Dad’s overprotectiveness again. She had come to hate it. Whatever shelter he could provide was long gone, but he still clung to the frame.
Mieshka didn’t need shelter.
She had made fire. She was not a little girl anymore. She wanted to be more than a bystander in her life.
She wanted magic.
A pot banged against the stove in the other room, and the microwave beeped. She heard her dad shuffle from the kitchen into the living room, a plate clinking a few seconds later. Her heart sank, and tears pricked again on her skin. The room turned blurry until she squeezed her eyes shut.
Drying off her face, she came out of her room. The hall and kitchen lights were both off, leaving only a pot light over the dining table. Dad sat alone at the table set for two, rotating his fork in the spaghetti. He didn’t look up when she approached.
“Sorry,” she said.