“No, it couldn’t have. Jamie and I have… found something.”
“Found something?” Charles asked, “In the middle of the night?”
I turned to look at Jamie, then back at his father. “Jamie and I went out tonight,” I said, “We did a little recon.”
“Recon?” Charles asked, frowning his disapproval. “What do you mean, recon?”
“With all due respect, neither of us wanted to sit on our hands while you shouldered the burden of having to not only decide on our course of action, but also put the plan into effect.”
“Jamie?” Charles asked, “You went behind my back?”
Jamie nodded. “You didn’t give me a choice. But now isn’t the time for that. You should hear what Max has to say.”
“I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”
“Charles, we aren’t your enemies here,” I said, “We’re just doing what we can to help us and our people get the hell out of the city as safely as possible, but you need to hear what I have to say. I have to tell you what I found.”
Charles took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Fine,” he said, sitting at his desk. “What did you find?”
I nodded. “At first we thought the facility powering the barrier was some kind of power station—a huge generator. A shield like that, designed to keep the elements out, that was going to need some juice. But what we found inside…”
“Getting to the point anytime soon?” Charles asked.
I looked up at him, square in the eyes, “Guardians,” I said, “I found Guardians in the facility.”
Charles perked up, but regarded me suspiciously. “You’re going to have to explain yourself slowly, and carefully.”
“I know what I’m going to say sounds crazy, but I saw them, I spoke to them. They’re prisoners, slaves. Guardians are powering the Angel Dome. There must have been… seven of them, maybe more, all trapped in this shell machine. Somehow someone figured out how to not only trap them, but use their power in a way it wasn’t meant to be used. They’re suffering, they’re in pain, and they blame us. All of us.”
Charles shook his head. “Is it possible you misunderstood something?” he asked, “How could you possibly have spoken to a Guardian? No one has done this in hundreds of years, maybe longer.”
“I don’t know how it was possible, but I know what I saw and what I experienced. I almost feel like they’ve been calling to me. For days. I first felt it the day we helped Kim and Daliah escape the Faction. I thought it was just claustrophobia at being stuck underground, in the sewers. I’ve felt that same chest-tightening again a couple of times since, and in all my life that’s never happened before.”
“So, maybe you’ve developed it over time?” Abel said, “That isn’t uncommon.”
“It was them, Abel; they’ve been reaching out to me. The feeling got stronger the closer I got to the chamber where they were being held.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Assuming why reach out to you now? Why not reach out to any mage?”
“Because I don’t have a chip.”
“Neither do I, but I haven’t felt anything.”
“I think I know,” Charles said, halting the small argument about to form between Abel and myself in its tracks.
“Then you believe me?” I asked.
He pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose and pinched it tightly, shutting his eyes before looking up at me again. “When we first brought you in,” he said, “Your chip was fried beyond repair. If it would have sustained any more damage, it would have stopped working on its own, and you would have become every bit the mage you are now whether we had intervened or not.”
“What are you saying?” Abel asked, puzzled now.
“I’m saying something about Max’s energy, her power, was severely damaging the chip in her neck.”
“Either that or it was defective.”
“Why don’t you stop being a dick, Rios?” I asked, anger now rushing to my chest. “Why is everything an argument with you?”
“I’m just trying to be reasonable, and make sure every possible explanation has been put on the table.”
“I agree,” Charles said, “We are all intellectual people, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Having said, Max’s chip was damaged when we extracted it. How, we don’t know. She also came into her powers a lot quicker than any other mage we had ever liberated. Is it possible that, if a Guardian was trying to reach out to her, she could have heard him because her power is… different? Her senses, perhaps, a little more attuned than ours?”
“Yes,” Abel said, his voice cold and logical, “That’s possible. I don’t know much about Guardians besides what we’ve talked about since I’ve been here, but they are supposed to be powerful beings, once the keepers of magic itself, correct?”
“They were more than just keepers of magic; they were the custodians of the Tempest, gatekeepers of the Precipice; they were like Gods.”
“And now they’re slaves,” I said, “Someone, somewhere, figured out how to trap them and use their power. I don’t know why they would do something like that. I just know that they figured it out, and there are at least seven of them right here, in New Seattle.”
“How… how could that have been possible?” Charles asked, “Why would anyone have done that? Guardians were an integral part of our culture, of our power. Our relationship with them was symbiotic.”
“These are all great questions, but they have to wait. Our priority now is to set them free.”
All eyes went to Charles, who didn’t speak for a time. He seemed to be contemplating the weight of all that had been said, figuring out the variables, the different factors. He was like a computer in that sense, trying to determine his next course of action using facts, numbers, and likelihoods of success rather than what felt right.
When he shook his head, I almost wasn’t surprised.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because the safety of our people is more important than the freeing of those Guardians—that is assuming they even exist.”
“I thought you said you believed me.”
“Even if that’s true, the fact of the matter is we have a lot of innocent people here who want to get out of this bunker and start living again. We can’t do that so long as we’re still in New Seattle, so our priority is getting out of the city. You said you had a plan?”
“Yeah, to free the Guardians—not get us out of the city.”
“Aren’t those one and the same thing?” Abel asked.
“What do you mean?” Charles asked.
“Well, if we free the Guardians from their confinement, and they are in fact powering the Angel Dome, won’t it collapse? At which point we won’t need the checkpoint anymore—we can just scatter to the wind.”
“We still don’t know what freeing the Guardians will do. Maybe the shield collapses, maybe it doesn’t. Regardless, if the Faction has been telling the truth about what the world looks like outside, we need to be ready for anything, and that means we need vehicles and equipment we can use to whether the storm once we’re out there. No to mention, if that is the case and the world really is inhospitable, I don’t want to be responsible for the damning of every man woman and child living within the boundaries of this so-called Shining City.”
“I don’t either,” I said, “I don’t. I know what freeing the Guardians might mean, and the thought terrifies me, but shouldn’t we have a little faith?”
“Faith?” Charles scoffed. “You had faith in the Faction, and where did that get you? Burned, cast out, and charged with the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Dad,” Jamie said, “C’mon, don’t be like this.”
“Don’t be like what, Jamie? As far as I’m aware all I’m doing is ensuring the survival of our culture, and unless you haven’t noticed, we’re on the brink of extinction. If the Faction finds us, we’re doomed. All of us. And th
en there will be no one left to stand up in defiance of the Faction’s corrupt morals and ideals.”
My lips pressed into a thin line. “So instead of trying to liberate the creatures you yourself have spoken about as Gods, your answer is to just leave them there to rot?”
“We don’t know that they’re rotting,” Charles said, “But we are. We won’t last long down here. We need supplies, and equipment, and it just so happens I know where we can get it.”
Abel narrowed his eyes. “Where?”
“Max isn’t the only one who has come up with some kind of plan. I’ve been pouring through the information you were able to bring back from HQ. I think we should go after the worm hole the Faction is mobilizing to destroy.”
I wanted to scream at him for even suggesting we should turn our backs on the Guardians. Their pain vibrated within my chest, inside of every fiber of my being, and I couldn’t shake it, no matter how hard I tried. But I felt Jamie’s hand clasp around mine and squeeze it tight before letting it go again. I turned my eyes on him, and felt some of that rage vent away like mist. He nodded, and I took a deep breath.
“What’s your plan?” I asked.
“The Faction brought in soldiers with markings we identified as belonging to the paramilitary force tasked with protecting the checkpoint as well as manning the vehicles that go in and out of the city. The location of the worm hole is far out of the city itself, in a place the Faction can’t just demolish, but they do want to shut it down, so they’ll need to find another way to do it. Whatever they decide to do, they’ll need the manpower to do it. That means men, equipment, and vehicles to move it all around; vehicles that might just be capable of surviving outside of the shield.”
“You’re… sure about this?”
Charles nodded. “As sure as I can be.”
“You want to attack the Faction?” Abel asked.
“Yes.”
I looked at Jamie, then at Abel. “For a man who works with facts and variables, you sure aren’t giving me many facts to work with here, only assumptions.”
“I know where the worm hole is,” Charles said, “I need you to trust me on that. As for the vehicles and the equipment, it’s a risk, but this one is a risk I’m willing to take. They Faction will expect us to attack HQ—they don’t know we know their plans.”
A frown darkened my face, but I nodded. That, at least, was a fact I could get behind. The Faction didn’t know we had infiltrated their meeting, and didn’t know we knew they would be sending teams to find and deal with any potential worm hole. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the Guardians to waste away in that chamber, not for another second, but the other ugly truth was, I had no idea what would happen should the shield come down. Maybe everyone and everything would die in an instant, me included. Or, worse, maybe everyone would die slowly, over months and months, suffering and screaming.
As much as I hated the thought of abandoning the Guardians, what choice did I have?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The bulkhead door leading to the hangar was open when I arrived. In the hangar, the energy was electric. There were members of the Order everywhere, some hauling crates, others distributing guns, others still helping civilians get into the vehicles they had come to this base on; jeeps, and vans mostly, but nothing armored or equipped to deal with whatever maelstrom awaited us outside of the shield. Everyone was getting ready to leave at the drop of a hat, and that hat was dropping.
I had no illusions that I would see this place again after today.
I walked further along the hangar, stepping up the ramp to the elevated platform where the Avenging Ace waited, her engines spinning but quiet. Abel was there, sitting on the edge of one of the side doors, staring down the scope of a long rifle to check the sight. Jamie was there too, wearing a tactical vest and slipping a cartridge of bullets into an automatic rifle. I had to admit, he looked pretty hot doing what he was doing.
They both did.
“Hey,” I said when I got close enough to speak, “How are we looking?”
“Looking good,” Jamie said, slipping the rifle’s strap around his neck and letting it hang down his side, “We should be ready to dust off in about five minutes.”
“Abel?” I asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.
“I didn’t know you knew how to use a sniper rifle.”
He looked up at me. “You never cared to ask.”
“Yeah, that gun doesn’t make him scarier at all,” Jamie said, the sarcasm in his voice coming through as clear as day.
“Don’t worry, as long as he uses it on the bad guys, we’ll be alright,” I said.
Jamie’s eyes found mine, and for an instant my body filled with warm tingles. I remembered our kiss, our unspoken kiss, and I wanted to kiss him again, just in case we didn’t get another chance. But there were too many people around, so instead of moving toward him, I side-stepped around him and headed for the Avenging Ace, but Jamie tapped my arm.
I turned to look at him. “What’s up?” I asked, flicking my blond hair around.
Jamie hugged me, one hand around my shoulder, and one around my waist. “Be careful,” he whispered into my ear.
I hugged him back, hesitantly at first, but then melting into it. “You too,” I said, enjoying the smell of his neck.
Abel cleared his throat. I looked at him, and saw him nodding across from me. When I turned around, Charles was coming up the ramp with Aisha by his side. He too was wearing a tactical vest, and he had a pistol strapped to a belt holster. He was coming with us, it looked like. Aisha too. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but it didn’t matter—I was still holding Jamie, Charles saw us, and the fact that he had seen us threw my other concerns out of the window.
“Charles,” I said, surprised, “You look like you’re getting ready to come with us.”
He squared up to me, breathed deep, and cast eyes on Jamie. “That’s because I am,” he said, “I’m tired of sitting back and doing nothing—I want to fight with my people.”
I looked at Aisha, cocked an eyebrow.
“Uh, I’m a dragon,” she said, “And we’ve already had the ‘I’m on your team’ talk, so I’m going too.”
“Alright,” I said. “Welcome aboard the Avenging Ace. Dust off is in five.”
Charles nodded and stepped into the aircraft behind Abel. Aisha followed, leaving Jamie and I outside for another fleeting moment, staring at each other. I gestured toward the aircraft, and Jamie stepped inside. When we were all on board and strapped in, Spider took us up, through the massive hangar door in the ground, and into the clouds.
I spent the ride mostly in silence, watching the clouds as we flew through them, then watching the display monitors in the cockpit, each showing different readings and measurements, and then going back to staring at the clouds. Occasionally I would glance over my shoulder and see Aisha looking at me. She would smile, and I would smile back, but no one spoke. The energy in the Ace was tense, but I thought that probably was because we knew we were going into a dangerous situation; one we didn’t know we would all make it out of.
I cracked my knuckles one by one and tried not to tap my foot against the floor. Times like these I wished I still had music I could listen to, but that just wasn’t the world we lived in anymore. I couldn’t quiet my mind before a hunt, couldn’t placate it with drums and guitars. It was all me, in my mind, all the time.
The monitor immediately in front of me started to bleep, and I perked up.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Spider glanced over. “We’ve been picked up,” Spider said, “That’s the Faction trying to figure out if we’re friendly.”
I stared at the monitor. “Is there a button I can press that gives them the electronic equivalent of the middle finger?”
Spider laughed. “No, there isn’t, but that would be pretty badass.”
“Get us in as close as you can. You remember the plan, right?”
He looked
at me and nodded. “Good. Let’s make this quick.”
I unbuckled myself from the co-pilot’s seat and moved into the back of the aircraft. Abel locked one bullet into the chamber of his long rifle and unbuckled himself too. One by one, Jamie, Charles, and Aisha freed themselves from their restraints and got ready to get out of the Ace at a moment’s notice. Glancing out of the cockpit window I saw the world beneath us begin to form from out of the clouds, and beneath us, I saw the place Charles and Aisha had brought us to, and my stomach sank.
There was no cover here, no buildings, nowhere to hide. It was a plain, open field, with minimal hills and tree coverage. A creek ran alongside a sharp drop, on the edge of which was this huge machine, easily thirty feet tall. Then I saw the portal, this shimmering tear in the middle of the structure on the cliff. Shafts of light occasionally pulled free from the tear in reality itself, as if the world on the other side was trying to spill into this one.
I watched people scrambling around on ground level, scattering away from the machine and heading back toward the many vehicles arranged around the area. There must have been eight vehicles, each of them long, armored, and capable of transporting not only people, but also supplies. I didn’t know if they’d be enough to transport the Order of Prometheus out of the city, but eight vehicles were better than one.
“Abel,” I said, turning to look at him.
He nodded, opened the side door letting a gush of wind into the Ace, and put his back against the wall, bringing his rifle up to his chest. He stared down the scope and trailed his rifle carefully, then gently squeezed the trigger. The muzzle coughed a bullet out, then another, and another. Jamie then moved to the other door, opened it, and prepared to cover our exit as Spider brought us closer to the ground. When he started shooting, I headed for the door and threw myself out.
My hand blazed with fire as I exited the Ace, diving out of the craft as if I expected to land in a pool instead of hard earth. I pulled both of my guns out of my holsters as I flipped in the air, positioning myself to land just right, using magic to control my descent. When I hit the ground, right in the middle of the scrambling personnel, I didn’t waste any time. My guns spat bullets, each of them seeking legs and shoulders where possible.
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