by K. Gorman
He nicked the side of her thumb. She jerked at the pain, but he held her steady. Blood welled in the cut, slipped down her skin, and oozed onto the smooth black surface.
Data exploded over the screen. Symbols sparked beside her blood, their light turning it into a translucent, sickly shade. Pain throbbed from the cut. Michael watched, his grip firm on her wrist.
Panic fluttered in her stomach. For the first time, real fear slid into her veins.
The Earth Mage had seemed friendly enough in the tunnels, when they’d been walking. Okay, maybe not friendly, but he hadn’t given off a happy, stabby, homicidal scientist flair.
That had changed.
She tensed as the seconds ticked by, data compiling on the screen. He scanned it, his expression as neutral as before.
When they slowed, he released her hand without a word and turned back to the wall.
She put pressure on the cut, elevated it above her heart, and watched him root around in the back cupboard. He seemed unhurried, confident they wouldn’t be disturbed—but why? He’d left Robin and Jo alive, knowing that at least one was running for help—so it wasn’t as though her kidnapping would go unnoticed. Eventually, word would get back to Sophia and Aiden.
The two Mages would come, proverbial guns blazing.
Her hand shook. She just had to wait long enough for the cavalry to arrive.
Green lettering still scrolled down the left side of the tablet like a vertical marquee. The rest swarmed around the smear of blood she’d left behind. She recognized the double-helix pattern of a diagram in the bottom corner. What had he said before? That he had questions?
Michael was looking for answers in her DNA.
Glass clinked when he returned. He handed her a test tube. “Bleed into that.”
His tone made a stitch of anger flare inside her. But curiosity overran it. “Why? What do you want?”
He paused, his back to her. “Answers.”
“In my blood?” She glanced down at the empty test tube. “Maybe I can save you the trouble of tests. I know my medical history.”
“I don’t care about your history, I care about your now.”
Nice to know he cared. Anger rose in her, clear as rain. Blood dripped down her finger. She pressed the lip of the test tube under the cut, eyeing the rest of the table. The beakers and bottles and tubes she’d first noticed stood to her right, their green liquid glossy and viscous. Beyond, another bottle held something clear.
Michael turned toward the wall. Green light flashed.
Thunk.
The floor shook. Glass clinked.
He pulled a segment of wall out, the tile and concrete moving like a desk drawer in his hands, edges sharp and sheer. Pale light, undulating like waves in the sun, pulsed from within a hollowed-out segment.
“What’s that?” She edged closer, craning to see around his arm. Hidden goodies? She’d bet the Earth Mage had tons of those secret drawers.
The light came from a small glass box—similar to the kind used to display jewelry. It was about the size of her fist, with a thick black base made from the same Lost Tech material as the tablet on the table.
Tendrils of white light curled up from the black, caressing the glass like luminescent smoke.
A black rock sat at its heart, devoid of color. Its dull, matte finish appeared to suck at the light. As if someone had taken part of the abyss and solidified it.
The sight made heat shift inside her. The Phoenix hadn’t left her eyes since it had appeared in the tunnel, and it didn't like what it saw now. Feathers of flame bristled inside her.
Unease crept through as Michael pulled it out of the wall.
“This,” he said, “is pre-exposed Maanai.”
Maanai. The stuff that made Aiden’s ship and every other piece of Lost Tech she’d come across. But…
“Pre-exposed?”
“Unprocessed. Untreated. It’s the same stuff that caused the collapse of my world.”
Oh, joy. And he just happened to have it in his hidden cubby? She wondered if the other Mages knew.
Michael shoved the drawer back in place, making the room shudder again. The pale light fluttered as he moved the case. It made a heavy clunk when he set it on the table, the instruments closest to it reflecting its light.
He took the test tube from her. A long streak of her blood ran down the side, a few drops pooling at the bottom. Placing the tube in a holder, he reached for the case. Tendrils of light licked at his skin, the movement reflected in his dark eyes. She stared.
It hadn’t just been the tunnel. His eyes really were that dark.
Symbols lit up his skin, shifting into a complex pattern down his fingers. They pulsed and flowed down to the case. Power surged in the air.
The white light vanished. The lid made a sucking noise as it disengaged from the container’s base. Mieshka caught a whiff of formaldehyde and moisture as he lifted it. The pain in her finger throbbed when he grabbed a new scalpel, its clean blade flashing in the light. He scraped part of the crystal into a beaker, tapped the knife on the glass, and replaced the lid on the base.
The light came back, sluggishly reforming around the canister.
Michael added the black dust to her blood, shaking it to coat the red. He hadn’t bothered to put on gloves, she noticed.
“What are you doing?”
He ignored the question, turning away to another counter. A regular Terran centrifuge sat on this side, looking exactly like the ones in her high school. It lit up at a touch from him, its lid opening with an electronic whir. He put a stopper on the test tube, counterbalanced the weight, and closed the lid. The sound of the machine’s engine filled the quiet room. When it stopped, he broke the silence.
“There’s no one coming for you,” he said.
She had preferred the quiet.
“How do you know? Can you sense them?”
Michael extracted the vial of blood and black crystal. The centrifuge underlit his face in an unhealthy glow. “They know to stay away from me, down here.”
Everyone except Roger and his glass knife, maybe. She kept her mouth shut. No sense in letting that cat out of the bag. More and more, she approved of Roger’s ambitions against the Earth Mage.
So long as they didn’t involve a certain new Fire Elemental getting murdered.
“Do you have a bandage?” she asked. “I’m starting to bleed onto the floor.”
He’d cut her deep.
He glanced over and reached for the counter. But, instead of a bandage, he handed her another test tube. Green light reflected onto his back as he turned away. He still wore the suit jacket she’d seen him in earlier, the material bunching around his shoulders as he reached into a top shelf.
Anger shook her breath. The tube felt cold in her hand. Amber light glinted on its lip, shed from her eyes.
For the first time, she felt the Phoenix rise inside her, meeting her anger with a rage of its own. Fire flooded her blood.
She straightened, lifted her chin, and let the glass drop.
It smashed against the tile.
“I’m not your fucking guinea pig.”
Michael stilled. The pale light shifted across the back of his jacket, made the shadows jump to his shoulder as he set his tool down. He turned, an eerie disquiet in his eyes. They regarded her across the table, as black and lifeless as the Maanai.
“No?”
Tendons tightened in his forearm. He advanced a step. A scalpel flew off the table and to his side, hovering in the air by his shoulder. Light gleamed on its blade.
Mieshka sidestepped, putting the table between them. Adrenaline slid into her blood. A twinge of pain shot up from her ankle, twisted during yesterday’s run.
His eyes followed her, wolfishly cold. His lip curled.
“You wear your fear on your sleeve.”
Metal and glass glinted on the table. She eyed the scalpel. Just how much did he control, anyway? Metal and soil, for sure—but the table was made out of wood. Gla
ss had once been sand, right? And plastic? How Earthy was petroleum?
Her eyes found a Bunsen burner by the edge of the table. Its fuel hose snaked through a hole in the table’s surface, leading to a tank of gas on the floor.
Hmm.
Michael leaned forward. His knuckles whitened as he pressed them into the surface of the table. The blade floated in the air at his side like a faithful dog.
“You don’t have to be conscious for this. Only alive,” he said.
How comforting. “For what? You still haven’t told me what you want.”
Quiet took the air. She could almost feel his power seeping out, reaching into the floor, touching the walls, catching hold of the ceiling. The lab's lights cast strange shadows on his face, twisting his features into something ugly.
“Extraction.”
That didn’t sound pleasant. “Extraction of what?”
“The Phoenix. I have a crystal ready for it.”
As if it heard his words, her Element shifted within her. Fire brushed her conscious. Power flooded her veins.
The Phoenix didn't like cages.
She pushed it back. “You want to steal my power? I thought you didn’t like thieves.”
Silence crushed the room. His power unfolded. The floor hummed, the ceiling shook—it was like every pore of the room was at his beck and call.
Everything except her. Her fire shot through her veins like a solar flare, hotter than it had been since the Phoenix had died. Her skin burned, growing hotter with each passing second.
Michael didn't move. The seconds stretched out, each one exorbitantly long in its passing.
Then, his face twisted. The knife flashed toward her.
She dodged—but not quick enough.
Pain shot through her arm. The knife embedded itself in her arm, cutting deep into the bicep. It pulled out before she could grab it, retreating out of reach. Blood coated its blade.
Mieshka stumbled back.
“You thought right. I don’t like thieves.”
Glass clinked as he picked a new test tube from the table. Mieshka gripped her upper arm, gritting her teeth against the pain. Her jacket soaked up the wound, the fabric darkening with blood.
Michael eyed it. “I don’t think that’s enough, do you?”
The knife darted in again, aimed at her thigh. She snatched at it and caught the handle as the tip stabbed through her jeans. New pain spiked up from her leg, but she held on strong. The handle jerked in her grip like a wild thing.
She backed up, stumbling over the slick tile, and looked around for something—anything—she could use.
The table spread out to her right, instruments and tools filed neatly over its surface. Neat, handwritten notes lay in organized stacks. Lime-green liquid caught the light, giving off a faint glow.
Fire erupted over her hand. Maybe if she lit the notes—
The table shifted. Her eyes widened as the opposite end reared up, turning toward her. Glass and metal crashed to the floor. The table rushed toward her.
She screamed and threw her hands up in defense. The knife ripped free, nicking her fingers. The table bore down on her, tall, heavy, and fast.
It smashed her into the wall.
For a second, nothing hurt. Her ears rang. The wind had been knocked out of her lungs. The edge of a counter jabbed into her spine. She couldn't feel anything below her knee. She caught a whiff of a chemical, smelling like the chlorine from her school's swimming pool. Green liquid spread on the tiled floor, seeping into the grout.
As Michael approached, his power retreated from the table. It shifted down and settled, one hard edge digging into the top of her foot. Mieshka squirmed, but it held fast. Her hand made a bloody print on its edge.
He stepped around the jutting legs of the table and paused in front of her. His body blocked out the other lights of the lab, casting her in shadow. The knife hovered by his shoulder like an obedient pet waiting to strike. Gently, he grasped her wrist and turned the palm over. Blood trickled down from her thumb, oozing from a slice on her palm.
He caught it in a test tube.
“There, now. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
She swallowed back a retort. Her hand shook in his grip. She shivered, adrenaline and pain coursing through her. The table shifted as she tried to wiggle her foot out, but she only succeeded in making it dig deeper. Her jaw tightened, teeth gritting against the pain.
He’d won this fight. Her gaze dropped to the floor.
Scientific tools littered the place. A weigh scale lay in two pieces, having fallen on its side, its screen flashing an error message. Three beakers had survived the fall intact, their contents spilled onto the tile. Michael’s notebook lay near the end of the room, its pages slowly soaking up some of the green liquid.
She winced as he squeezed, milking the blood from her cut.
“There. Almost done. The extraction process will tell me the rest.”
A new smell came to her, and she shifted her gaze back to locate it. The ringing in her ears subsided into the sound of a rainstick. Then, when that cleared, she heard the soft sound of gas hissing in the quiet room.
The Bunsen burner had detached from its hose. Its fuel canister lay half a meter from its side, spewing invisible gas into the room. She stared at it, dully registering the information.
Fire lit inside of her, ready to go. The Phoenix slid behind her eyes.
Michael followed her gaze.
“You don’t want to do that. You—”
Whoom!
His hand jerked from hers as the gas ignited. Fire roared, filling the air around her. Heat rushed her face, blew her hair back. She closed her eyes, feeling the fire surround her, tickling against her skin like a warm, living thing.
She’d done this once in the past, back before the Phoenix's death. Granted, she’d been in an elevator, not a lab, and the Phoenix’s sheer power had precluded the need for a helper such as the gas. The fire crackled around her now—harmless to her, not so harmless to Michael.
It felt nice. For a minute, she forgot her pain.
She opened her eyes, locating Michael about a meter back from where he’d started. The fire curled around him, licking at a barrier an arm’s length from his side. Green symbols flashed on his skin.
A shield. Of course. But the look on his face was priceless.
She shoved the table off her, knowing she didn’t have long before the fire burnt itself out. As she’d found with the candles yesterday, she really didn’t have the stamina for long bouts. Pain shot through her leg as the table moved. The weight released from her foot, and a surge of blood rushed back. Her toes tingled.
She stumbled toward the door again. Orange light flickered on the doorframe and cast a wicked shadow into the next room.
The floor rumbled, quaked. A second later, pain slashed into the back of her leg. She tripped, but caught herself. Her hand met the wooden frame, smearing it with dirt and blood. Tongues of flame still clung to the fabric of her hoodie, hanging on to her like a child to its mother. A knife whizzed past her head, sailing into the dark room. She ducked, rounded the corner, and put the wall between her and Michael.
Mieshka slumped against it. Her breath came hot and heavy, shallowed by the pain. The wall felt cool to her touch. She watched as the firelight in the other room died. Flames flickered on her clothes, left over from her Element.
Soon, all that remained was the smoke.
Glass crunched on the other side of the wall. Michael, likely coming to get her.
That was it for her. That was the best she could do, for now. Maybe if Aiden had trained her more, maybe if she’d practiced on the sly, ignored his warnings, maybe—
Magic pulsed. She jumped as cool light flooded her skin, spreading from her core to her extremities. She stumbled up, making a butchery of the ‘ready’ stance Jo had taught her. Cold magic followed her bones, spread over her skin. The fire on her clothes went out.
“That was stupid, girl.”
She shivered. Her hand glowed in the dark, lines of web-thin light spreading on the back of her hand, following every digit down to her nails. Its shine cut through the blood, burning brightly in the dark. It reflected on the wall next to her, as blue as Ryarne’s summer sky.
Wait. Blue?
The air shifted, twisted. A second later, she wasn’t alone.
Sophia crouched by her, her skin ablaze with blue sigils, ready for use. She caught Mieshka’s frantic gaze. In the dim light, Mieshka saw the dark determination of her eyes, the grim twist of her mouth.
Michael's shadow blocked the door. “Are you done now?”
Sophia snarled. “Not quite.”
Power roared into the air, blasted toward Michael. Sophia leapt forward, arms moving in a controlled, violent manner. Symbols flashed into the air, dropping to the ground like rain.
A force shoved Michael back from the door. His shadow vanished from the threshold.
Sophia followed it through, a hard set to her jaw.
The floor rumbled. Mieshka shrank away from the wall. Magic roared in the next room. Tiles cracked and snapped. The walls trembled. She heard the groan of the table again as it scraped across the floor.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten, taking a long, deep breath. Then, she forced herself to her feet, used the wall for support, and hobbled to the door. Her hand left a bloody smear against the drywall. Blue and green flashes of light played against each other like a mad rave. Glass crashed. Something hissed, screamed.
Then, all went quiet. The lightshow stopped.
She peeked around the corner.
Chapter 11
Sophia stood closest to her, legs splayed, blue symbols jittering across every part of her skin. Green, translucent liquid circled in the air around her, twisting in the light.
Michael faced her across the room, similarly bedecked. Green symbols flared on his skin, sliding over his knuckles. A great fissure cracked through the wall behind him, shorting out the lights on that side of the room. The floor tiles had cracked, forming a perfect circle around him.
Tufts of fire still burned on the table. Black smoke hovered near the ceiling in a cloud. It smelled like creosote and burnt plastic.