by TR Cameron
The drone showed a square complex centered on the building. Only one road provided access, and the same heavy chain-link fence topped with razor wire that ran along the perimeter of the place blocked it. The buzz and pull of static told them the barrier was electrified from ten feet away. Idryll observed, “That’s pretty serious.”
“What do you know about electrical fences?”
The shapeshifter replied, “Enough that I don’t want to mess with that one, that’s for sure.”
Ruby shook her head without taking her eyes off the space beyond the fence Idryll didn’t want to mess with. “Tree, any sign of technological or magical alarms inside the perimeter?”
“None that the drone can detect. Which, you know, is pretty concerning in itself.”
“Yeah. Agreed.” The place wouldn’t be unguarded, which meant the tricks and traps that awaited them were of the sophisticated variety if the drone couldn’t spot them. Fine, whatever. She killed the connection to her boyfriend and turned to Idryll. “Okay. We’re going to go up and over the fence. I need you to stay close because the steps behind us will vanish. I’m trying to keep my magical emanations concealed here.” Nonetheless, she wrapped herself in force magic and did the same with her companion. While she couldn’t maintain both shields during any significant confusion, she had enough brainpower to manage it for a while, as long as no one was actively working to kill them.
She created stairs out of force magic and stepped up, with Idryll right behind her. Soon they were stepping carefully down on the opposite side of the fence and crouching to avoid setting off any sound or motion sensors that might be nearby. The tech goggles flicked through detection modes as she ran her gaze systematically over the ground ahead, again finding nothing. She muttered, “My best guess is physical dangers hidden by magic, although I suppose there could be magic with technological triggers. In any case, keep an eye out for tripwires, lasers, pressure pads, that sort of thing. Hell, watch out for landmines. Who knows how serious these bastards are about security?”
As they made their way ever so slowly toward the building, staying low, crawling in places to remain invisible in the dust and shrubs, they came across several of each kind, except the landmines. Ruby had brought along toys to counteract everything she could think of and had parted with a third of her stockpile before they spotted the next challenge. Idryll hissed, and Ruby froze. “What?”
Her partner replied, “Go to thermal, look ahead and to the right.”
Hidden in a bush that might’ve been artificially constructed for the purpose was a figure, seated but with arms extended as though holding the handles of a weapon. “Nice catch.”
“Want me to take him out?”
Ruby shook her head. “The chances are excellent that they have a radio routine set up and will notice if he’s missing. No. The presence of humans on the outside makes me think magicals on the inside are the real threat. These are mainly to discourage any general challenge that might arise. It also explains why we haven’t found any magical traps out here. Like on the Strip, they’re using the humans basically as chasers, with magicals as the hammer. Let’s slip past.”
She reinforced the veils they’d been traveling under, and they snuck carefully in between two of the positions, which were rather obvious once they knew what to look for. They found some protective shrubbery twenty feet from the building, and Ruby gazed up at it. “Well, it’s basically a cement blockhouse. Awesome. Great design, Reno. Really attractive stuff. Demetrius, have you figured out what this place was?”
She wouldn’t have risked using the radio if not for the encrypted booster on her belt, specifically designed to control signal leak. It used line-of-sight to a repeater she’d placed beyond the perimeter. He replied, “Private company, definitely just a shell. If I had to guess, based upon what I’ve seen so far, this looks like a government thing. CIA, FBI, something.”
She scowled. “You don’t think it’s them now, do you?”
“No. Seems as if this place went dormant in the records decades ago. I’m guessing someone bought it or is borrowing it.”
The news inspired some relief. While she’d fight through whatever she had to in order to free her sister, not winding up in the crosshairs of the government was an outcome to be desired. She pulled the drone from the case on her belt and hit the button to unfold it, then used the controller to fly it around the building. It made a complete circuit, and by the end, they’d only found a garage with multiple bays and a single entrance door on the opposite side. “Damn, these people were serious about security.”
She slid her fingers across the device to make the drone climb to get a look at the roof. Amidst the rooftop heating and cooling equipment was an access door. The building had no windows at all, and she would bet that its construction was a continuous pour of concrete into a frame, meant to be invulnerable. This sort of place should contain the Hulk, not my sister. Although it’s true, she’s not much fun when she’s angry, either.
She landed the drone on the roof and paused with her finger hovering over the destruct button, waiting to see if it triggered any alarms. After five minutes without a reaction, she felt fairly confident they were still undiscovered. She was pretty sure she’d plotted out all the cameras at the beginning, and hadn’t seen any up there, so that wasn’t an entirely unexpected development. Ruby went up to the building, strengthened her veil, and said, “Wait here,” to Idryll, who immediately knelt in the shadows.
Ruby blasted herself to the top with force magic, landing softly on the edge, not wanting to go any further before taking a good solid look at the surface. Turning, she let a line of force fall from her hand, then braced herself as Idryll climbed up it in a quick crawl. She muttered, “Damn, you’re heavy.”
Idryll laughed. “No, you’re weak. Also, it should be me taking risks like that, not you.”
Ruby shook her head. “Whatever. Let’s get moving.” She crouched and peered carefully over the tar and gravel surface, trying to spot any obvious locations where traps might be waiting. She couldn’t find any and hoped that whoever was using the place hadn’t had time to outfit the area with magic detection. This high up, probably they’d count on the humans outside as the main deterrent and focus most of the magical defenses inside the building. She layered force steps again so they didn’t have to walk on the surface, and they crossed to the door. Naturally, it was locked. Ruby crouched and pulled a tool from her belt, setting it to the lock.
Idryll commented, “That’s new. What is it?”
A click signaled success, and Ruby put the device away with a satisfied grin. “Electronic lock breaker. Diana’s folks gave it to me. They really do have the best toys. I need to get Kayleigh and Margrave together sometime.”
Her companion laughed. “They’d never stop talking. Then they’d probably both die of hunger because they’d forget to eat while they were working.”
She nodded. “Good point. Put that one on the back burner. For now, let’s go find whoever’s holding my sister and beat them into rubble.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They descended the stairwell cautiously, pausing after each step to survey the surfaces ahead for traps, physical or magical. None was apparent, and the door at the bottom that led onto the third floor was unlocked. Ruby listened carefully for any sign of life beyond the barrier but found none. She checked the tracker, which showed Morrigan closer to the other side of the building. “Okay, here we go.” She called up her full-body force shield, wrapped one around Idryll, put another in front of them, and used her magic to open the door.
No response came, so she swung the door all the way open and moved through it, letting the largest shield fall. The area was dark, lit only by small circles in the ceiling that did little to alleviate the gloom. Her magical mask’s technological eyepieces shifted to lowlight mode, rendering everything in a greenish haze. The hallway was wider than normal, reminding her of a hospital corridor big enough to push a stretcher through.
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br /> She led Idryll forward, and they opened the doors to either side as they progressed. The left side of the hallway had more of them, each revealing a small enclosure that looked very much like cells. The opposite wall’s doors gave access to larger rooms, with chairs resembling ones she’d seen at her dentist’s office bolted to the floor.
Idryll asked, “Torture chambers?”
The same thought had occurred to Ruby. “Or medical bays. Maybe this was a hospital.”
Her partner shook her head. “Doesn’t feel like a hospital.”
“Yeah. I hear that.”
Morrigan's cell was at the far end of the dozen on the left side of the hallway. Ruby yanked open the door, only to find the chamber empty. Disappointment cascaded over her. She growled, “I knew we couldn’t get that lucky. This thing only works in two dimensions, so she must be on one of the lower levels.”
Idryll nodded. “Makes sense, since this floor doesn’t have actual power or anything.”
“It has defenses, though.” Ruby pointed up at the cameras and the gates set into the walls that presumably could spring shut at need.
“Wonder why they aren’t active.”
She shrugged. “Old building, maybe the electricity is inoperative on this level.”
Idryll frowned back at the door they’d come through. “Or they wanted to provide an easy entrance on the top floor to persuade any invader to select that route.”
“Well, if that was their plan, they succeeded.”
“Should we activate the backpacks?”
The mention inspired Ruby to shrug hers up to recenter the weight. “No. Those are our emergency backups. We don’t use them until there’s a real need.” She pointed ahead. “Another staircase. Makes sense from a security perspective that each flight only goes down a level. Hopefully, we’ll find Morrigan on the next floor.”
Idryll nodded. “Hopefully there’s not a basement.”
“Thanks for that happy thought.” Ruby used force magic to open the door barely far enough to peer through. The stairway was dark, but her eyepiece display came alive with a chaotic arrangement of beams and sensors. She breathed, “Wow. That’s unwelcoming.”
Idryll peered through the doorway below her. “Both technology and magic?”
She replied, “Yep. Total maze. Everything set up kind of haphazardly, like portable units that someone stuck down at random. I don’t see a way to get through without tripping them. So, I guess we’ll need to go loud earlier than we’d hoped.” She worried, again, that the kidnappers might respond violently to cut their losses and escape.
Idryll said, “There’s another option.”
Ruby frowned. “What?”
“I can make it through there in my smallest form.”
She refused automatically. “You’d be going in without anything. That would be plain stupid.”
Her companion shook her head and slid out of the backpack’s straps. “In the stairwell, all I need is to be small and agile. On the floor below, teeth and claws will suffice.” The resolve in her voice was unmistakable. It was clear her partner intended to do it with or without Ruby’s blessing. Dammit.
She sighed. “Okay. Be careful. Once you get Morrigan out, tell her to go home, then you and I can finish finding the others.”
“Will do.” Idryll shrank to the size of a large house cat and slipped through the opening, headed for the floor below.
In this form, Idryll sensed more than saw the traps along the way as she crawled and jumped to avoid them. She’d created a mental map while looking through her lenses and remembered the path easily. The scents of the building were plentiful but mostly annoying. Dust, unwashed humans, several varieties of magicals. The second floor was active, filled with noises made by people moving about and murmuring, and on what she judged to be the other end of the level, an argument of some kind.
She pressed up against the door leading from the stairwell and shifted back into her normal form to insert a claw against the adhesive edge of the alarm sensor on the frame, detaching it so it wouldn’t lose contact when the door moved. She opened it and slipped through, already returned to her feline form before it closed softly behind her. From this angle, the cells were on the right, the larger rooms on the left. The hallway seemed gargantuan in her smaller form.
On this level, the doors along the right side had indicator lights, all of which she could see glowing. Presumably locked. So how does one unlock them? She noticed the doors in the left-hand wall were set differently from the floor above, an additional entrance visible in the line nearest to her current position. If I were putting in a security office, that would be a good place for it. Especially if they weren’t thinking about someone coming in from the roof.
That door had no indicator and stood slightly ajar. She poked her nose into it and found a control desk directly in front of her. It looked like something from an old spy movie or war film, huge and grey, with lots of screens. Behind it was a man in a black leather jacket and dirty jeans, his heavy boots propped up on the station. His head bounced in rhythm with whatever he heard through his tiny earbuds. To her ears, it sounded tinny and awful, but he seemed to enjoy it.
Idryll crouched and scuttled behind him on soft paws, then rose to her humanoid form and put him in a chokehold. He feebly thrashed as she cut off the blood flow to his brain, then passed out. She lowered him gently to the floor, making sure both he and his chair landed with a minimum of noise. She considered kicking him in the temple to ensure he stayed out but knew Ruby wouldn’t want her to risk killing him with the blow. Trash like this doesn’t deserve to live.
Nonetheless, she left him lying there and turned to the control panel. Two rows of buttons, each matching the number of cells on the second floor and presumably the first, were positioned under stacked lights that glowed red. She pressed the one that should correspond to Morrigan's cell, and the indicator switched to green. Her speed wasn’t quite a run to reach the door, but it was definitely more than a walk. She opened it and caught Morrigan's fist as it flew out at her. “Whoa, easy there.”
Ruby’s sister offered a thin smile. She looked haggard, equal parts tired and worried, with maybe a little fear mixed in. “Idryll. Thank goodness. We have to get the others. Our captors let slip that there’s a bunch of us here.”
Idryll, who had turned at a noise from further down the hallway, replied, “I think we have a bigger problem.”
Morrigan growled, “Oh, good. Ever since they took me, I’ve been dreaming of payback. The Kilomea is mine.” She charged, and Idryll followed with a roar.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Morrigan hadn’t enjoyed her recent past. She’d woken in a cell with a splitting headache, immediately and thoroughly furious with herself for not seeing the attack coming. At the very least, I should’ve had some defenses up as a precaution. Sometimes, managing the different roles of civilian and fighter was a challenge, but in the future, she planned to err on the side of the latter. So what if people think Morrigan Achera is tough? Maybe what I need is a new image.
Those thoughts filtered through her mind as she closed the distance to the Kilomea. She wasn’t sure if he was the person who’d hit her or if he’d even been there. Still, she had a score to settle, and since he was part of the group holding her captive, he was fair game. If he was one of the three, so much the better. Idryll flashed past, faster on her feet, and effectively interposed herself between anyone else who might’ve gotten involved with Morrigan and her target. Thanks, partner.
The Kilomea whipped a punch at head level, right where she would’ve been if she hadn’t stopped her headlong charge a moment before in anticipation of such a move. The swing didn’t open him up as much as she’d hoped, but she managed an elbow smash into his ribs before she had to dart backward to avoid a jab from his other fist. He growled, more in annoyance than pain, it appeared. She’d struck something resistant, and part of her mind noted that she’d have to hit more vulnerable spots since he was wearing armor. F
ine, whatever.
He snarled, “Get back in your cell, little girl, and perhaps you can avoid getting hurt.”
“Pain doesn’t concern me. All I care about is seeing you bleeding on the floor and begging for mercy.”
He set his feet in an even stance, ready to shift in any needed direction. “You will have a long wait if that’s your desire.”
“We’ll see.” She took a step forward and jumped, raising both of her knees to her chest and slamming her heels out at him. He lifted his arms to block, taking the shot on padded forearms, and she fell to her back. He moved in, thinking her vulnerable, exactly as she’d hoped. She shouted in anger and lashed out with force magic, blasting a bolt into each of his knees. The right one was bent when the magic struck, and it twisted sideways, probably tearing something inside. His left one, though, was locked out when the bolt hit.
The joint broke with a loud snap, and he fell to the floor, clutching it. She bounced up and stood over him, then pulled back her foot and started kicking any areas his hands weren’t protecting. Eventually, he was moaning and covering his face while she landed blows to his torso. She’d left her impractical shoes behind in the cell, and the soreness in her feet finally convinced her to stop attacking. She knelt beside him and said, “That’s only the start. If you’re still here when I finish with the rest of your people, we’re going to continue this. You might want to start crawling.”
While her partner took on the single giant, Idryll threw herself at the other four people in the corridor. They all wore leather jackets like the first and the same dirty jeans and heavy boots. They went straight for magic though, doubtless realizing they couldn’t stand against her in a purely physical contest. She dove aside from an electrical blast, thankful for the wide hallway, and leapt over the line of fire that scored the tile seeking her.