by Jim C. Hines
Broken bars clanged to the floor. A kick from Deb knocked a triangular chunk of three-inch thick Plexiglas loose. That only left the devourer.
“You’re gonna need more swords,” Deb commented.
I stepped carefully through the hole into the cell. Shadow reached for me, even as I strengthened the spells in the wall, tightening the thing’s leash and choking it back, inch by inch, until it was pinned in place and helpless.
A young werebear crouched in the far corner. She was thirteen years old at most, and looked to be in good health. Her loose-fitting red jumpsuit was dirty, and her ragged hair had been cut short. She sniffed the air. She might not be able to see me very well, but she could smell my presence just fine.
“It’s all right. We’re going to get you out of here. Where are your parents?”
“No entiendo.”
“Me llamo Isaac. Soy de los Porteros.”
She cocked her head. Either I’d bungled the Spanish or else she didn’t know what the Porters were. Possibly both.
I sat down a short distance away and examined the magic they’d forced into her body to prevent her from changing forms. The text was identical to that of the pearls in the guards’ badges, but it was concentrated in the throat. They’d inserted or injected it beneath the skin, tagging her like an animal.
I reached out, and she flinched away, one hand jerking up to cover a dark scab on her neck.
They’d probably put a tracking chip in there, too. I considered trying to use my enchanted mirror to pluck it out, but trying to open a portal into a child’s throat was dangerous enough. When you added that damned pearl to the equation, I’d almost certainly end up killing her. “Deb, we’ve got to find another way of opening these doors. Any suggestions?”
“Ask him.” Lena hurled a large, muscular man to the floor in front of the cell. She held a second guard by the collar. He struggled like a kitten in his mother’s jaws, with the same lack of success.
The girl’s flinch told me everything I didn’t want to know. “¿Te hizo daño?” I asked, as gently as I could.
“A mí, no. A mi hermano.”
I stepped out of the cell. “Where is this girl’s brother?”
The man on the floor groaned. “Three cells down, on the left.”
Lena brought her bokken to the throat of the guard struggling in her grip. The wood was needle-sharp, and had drawn a visible trickle of blood. “I know what you did to him. What I do to you depends on the choices you make in the next few minutes. Open these doors.”
“What’s she talking about, Franklin?” The second man started to rise. Deb drove her heel into the middle of his back, pressing him against the tile.
Lena shoved Franklin toward the door. He pulled a metal baton, spun, and swung hard.
Lena blocked the blow with her forearm. Metal hit oak. Franklin grimaced from the impact, which had probably sent vibrations all the way to his shoulder. She moved forward and struck his wrist. I heard bone snap.
Franklin cried out. His partner tried to roll free. Deb bent down, and he caught her in the nose with a wild punch. Blood poured down her face, but she simply bared her teeth and grabbed the back of his neck.
“Don’t kill him!” I wasn’t sure which of them I was talking to.
Lena raised her bokken. “I won’t ask again, Franklin. You’re going to open these cells, and then you’re going to help us find the sirens who arrived here last night.”
“Look around, freak,” he spat. “I hope you liked the tour, because you and your friends are going to spend the rest of your lives in a prison just like it.”
“This isn’t a prison,” Lena said quietly. “It’s a laboratory. You think I didn’t see the tools in the exam room where you and your partner were cowering? Scalpels made of steel, silver, gold, titanium . . . for testing our weaknesses, right? Dental tools for extracting vampiric fangs. Electrical probes. Neatly labeled test tubes of everything from holy water and colloidal silver to various types of acid. Then there’s the locked refrigerator with the biohazard warning. Blood and tissue samples? Or are you testing bioweapons on your captives?”
“If they’re experimenting on inhuman subjects, where are the researchers?” I asked.
“Four doctors oversee the testing,” said Franklin’s partner. “They come in a couple times a week.”
“Shut your face, Johnson,” snapped Franklin.
“Fuck you, man. This place is messed up and you know it.”
“Oh, Franklin doesn’t care about that,” Lena continued. “He has other interests.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Johnson spun. “What the hell did you do, man?”
“Nothing. I didn’t—”
“You think you can hide your desires from a nymph?” Lena examined the edge of her bokken. “I could feel your filth from beyond these walls. What you wanted to do. What you’d done.”
“You sick fuck,” snapped Johnson. “What’s wrong with you?”
“My friends want to find those sirens,” said Lena. “I want that too, but I can’t concentrate on sirens when your twisted lust permeates the air. It’s an oily smoke that clings to the skin, polluting everything it touches. I mean to end that pollution.”
“I’ll open the cell doors,” Franklin whimpered. “They’re computer controlled, but there’s an override code in case of emergency. Fire, computer failure, that sort of thing. It’s how I . . .” He flushed and stared at the floor.
“How you took this girl’s brother from his cell,” Lena finished. She hauled him to his feet. “Use it.”
They moved to a control panel at the far end of the hallway. Moments later, bars began to swing open with a series of loud clunks, and Plexiglas doors slid to the side.
The prisoners stepped uncertainly into the hall. Their subcutaneous magic-dampers played havoc with my tattered invisibility spell. “My name is Isaac Vainio. We’re going to get you out of here. There are other prisoners, a group of sirens. Have any of you seen them?”
A few of the prisoners shook their heads. The rest were silent.
“They’re gone.” That was the other guard, Johnson. “Left about two hours ago. We’re not equipped to hold marine species long-term.”
Deb swore and hammered her fist against the wall. “Why bring them here at all, then?”
“Tagging, scanning, and cataloging. The computer equipment is state of the art. Examinations that would normally take hours are automated, and—um, why is that ghost dude on fire?”
Heat seared my ear. I craned my head away from Smudge as well as I could, but I was pretty sure he’d blistered the lobe. “We’re about to have trouble.”
“There.” One of the prisoners pointed to the broken door behind us. I saw movement beyond, and then a shotgun barrel poked through.
Deb was already shoving the closest prisoners back into their cells. She threw herself to the floor as the first gunshots rang out. I followed suit and rolled up against the wall, being careful not to squash Smudge in the process.
Lena strode past me, one arm outstretched toward the oaks she had grown in the doorway during her initial attempt to break through. They creaked and twisted to life. Branches twined around the gun. Lead shot thudded into Lena, but none penetrated her oak skin.
Several branches cracked and broke, weakened by the guards’ badges. The tree continued to grow, weaving new branches through the doorway in a thick wooden web. Leaves sprouted from the branches, further obscuring us from view.
“Hold fire,” someone yelled from the end of the hall. “You’ve got no way out. This is your only chance to surrender.”
“I can’t hold them very long,” Lena said quietly.
I could hear the guards pulling and snapping the branches of her makeshift barrier. With their badges siphoning Lena’s magic, her tree was little more than mundane wood. She gasped in pain at every broken branch.
I looked around, trying to orient myself. If this was the north cell block, the walled yard I’d seen w
as on the opposite side of the facility. My enchanted compact mirror wasn’t big enough for anyone except maybe Smudge to escape through, even if I’d been confident in my ability to set a destination I couldn’t see. The devourers would stop any magical attempt to break through the outer walls.
That left making my own door as the only option.
“What about him?” Another prisoner, a vampire, hauled Franklin out of the control room where he’d been hiding.
Lena strode toward him. “You opened the cells. That’s a point in your favor.” She paused just long enough for him to open his mouth, then cut him off. “It’s not enough. Not even close. So if there’s anything you want to tell us, anything about the sirens or the researchers or the people running things here that might make me decide not to hand you over to the werebears, this is your chance.”
“Hurry up,” Deb shouted.
Franklin looked at the prisoners, then at Lena, and swallowed hard. “I don’t know much about the researchers, but one of the big shots was through here a couple of days ago for a surprise inspection. Some senator. Keebler, or something.”
My jaw clenched so hard I was surprised I didn’t set off my implanted phone. “Keeler.”
“Yeah, that’s the guy. I saw him at the end of my shift. He didn’t look happy. Whatever they’re doing here, I guess they’re not doing it fast enough for him.”
I was going to check out a copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and turn the bastard into a giant cockroach. “Anything else?”
He shook his head and blinked back tears. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Do you know what a geis is, Mister Franklin? It’s a kind of curse. A magical command with consequences if you try to disobey.”
“What kind of consequences?”
“Whatever I want.” I pressed my thumb to his forehead. “When you leave here today, you’re going to drive to the closest news station. You’re going to tell them all about your magical prison here, and then you’re going to confess to everything you’ve done to these prisoners.”
His tears broke free.
“If you lie, your tongue will transform into a leech and crawl into your throat. I’ve never tried this particular curse, but I’d give you fifty-fifty odds of survival, assuming someone’s fast enough to trach you and kill the leech before it goes too deep.”
“I can’t,” he whimpered.
“You’d better. Because if you haven’t confessed within the next twenty-four hours, let’s just say it won’t be your tongue that develops a mind of its own and starts burrowing inward.”
His eyes went to the rip on his shirt where his badge had been. Lena must have torn it away.
“Those badges protect you from external magic,” I said. “They won’t protect you from me. This curse is written onto your skull. Just like Gutenberg used to do.” I shoved him away and turned my back. “Deb, can you erase us from their thoughts? Leave Franklin’s geis and terror in place, though. It’s time to get the hell out of here.”
Loading Pinti6.4.
Hello, Talulah.
Shall we play a game?
Pinti:> bd 192.142.82.1:80
Location: http://www.newmillennium-intra.org
Server: Ito4
Connection blocked
Pinti:> Run PW-scan 192.142.82.1:80
PW-scan 192.142.82.1:80 loaded
PW-scan 192.142.82.1:80 terminated
0 results
Pinti:> Run PW-dump 192.142.82.1:80 -palmerb /s
PS-dump 192.142.82.1:80 loaded
Pinti:> bd 192.142.82.1:80 -u/palmerb -p/PS-dump
Location: http://www.newmillennium-intra.org
Server: Ito4
Connection loading
Pinti:> Run McCullough.TP2 -palmerb
Loading . . .
McCullough.TP2 installed
Pinti:> Load webgoblin
Webgoblin installed
Pinti:> servertrace
Server: Ito2
Location blocked
Server: Ito3
Location blocked
Server: Ito5
Location blocked
Server: Ito8
Location blocked
Server: Ito9
Location blocked
Server: Ito10
Location blocked
Server: Ito12
Location blocked
Server: Ito13
Location blocked
Press any key to continue . . .
“How frightened were you when you founded the Porters? When you publicly broke away from the old master-apprentice model of sorcery and challenged a system that had existed for centuries?”
“It was one of the most terrifying things I ever did, and one of the most exhilarating. Once you make a choice like that, you commit the rest of your life to dealing with the consequences.”
“Damn. I wish you’d said that a year ago before I wrote that letter to the world.”
“Cheer up, Isaac. If you survive, you’ll have plenty of time to learn to live with the aftermath. If not, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“You’re still an asshole, you know that?”
“I do, yes.”
A METAL CANISTER STRUCK the wall at the end of the hallway and began to spew thick smoke. A second followed.
Instantly, my eyes started to burn. Tears streamed down my face. I backed away, coughing and cursing.
Some forms of tear gas were flammable, and Smudge was still burning. If he ignited the gas, it would quickly kill us all.
“In here.” I pulled the closest prisoners into a nearby cell. Lena gathered the rest. “Give me as much space as you can!”
I dropped my invisibility and grabbed Control Point. Through dripping eyes, I conjured up a wind to keep the worst of the gas in the hallway.
It was only a partial reprieve, and short-lived as well. Ashen shadows reached from the walls, drawn to the scent of active magic. The wind sputtered. Between the devourers and the prisoners’ implants damping my efforts—
Those implants attacked magic. Devourers were magical chaos.
“Everyone form a circle around me.” I coughed harder. Mucus flowed freely from my nose, and I could barely see anymore. The younger prisoners were crying and screaming. The older ones were doing their best to help, ripping off their sleeves to form makeshift masks. The werebear I’d spoken to earlier doubled over and vomited in the corner.
The wind from my book weakened further, but that didn’t matter. I was watching the devourer.
As the prisoners closed ranks around me, it pulled back as if burned. The magic-dampers and the devourer reacted like potassium and water, each seeking to destroy and consume the other.
The devourer lunged again, tearing at the prisoners’ enchantments as it tried to reach me. At the same time, those enchantments ate away at the devourer, dissolving its outer edges into smoke.
I wiped the worst of the tears and snot from my face. The devourer wasn’t strong enough to counter so many spells at once. It struggled like a hooked fish.
I reached toward the closest of the prisoners and did something I never would have imagined: I tried to help the devourer. I joined its assault on the magic-dampers. Just as I’d destroyed the guards’ badges when we broke in, I worked to unravel the text poisoning the prisoners.
It was easier this time. Don’t get me wrong, it hurt like hell, and the gagging and coughing didn’t help, nor did the sensation of acid eating my throat and lungs from the inside. I retrieved Excalibur’s scabbard. “Everyone grab hold.”
The scabbard countered the worst of the physical damage, easing the burning sensation.
By the time the devourer faded into nothingness, I’d helped it to completely strip the magic-dampeners from nine of the prisoners, and weakened the rest. It would have to be good enough. Half of us were curled up on the floor, coughing and crying. Smudge was an angry ball on my shoulder, the bristles of his body glowing like matchsticks.
I traded Control
Point for Neverwhere. “Who’s ready to get the hell out of here?”
I was the last one through. The prisoners had gone first, beginning with the nine who could escape without damaging the gateway I’d created. For the rest, I had to maintain and repair the portal as their weakened magic-dampers eroded it from within.
I sent Smudge through with Lena, waited for her and Deb to disappear, and then hurled myself out of the cell.
I fell facefirst onto a linoleum floor. I shut the book and destroyed the portal behind us. Some of the tear gas had followed us through, but the air here was much better. Most of our escapees were crowding around a drinking fountain, gulping and rinsing their eyes.
“Didn’t you say that book connects doorways that are similar in nature?” Lena asked hoarsely.
I nodded.
She glanced around at laminated posters and narrow, orange-painted lockers. “And you teleported us from a prison into a high school?”
“Looks that way.” We’d emerged through a pair of metal fire doors. It was the weekend, so the building should be relatively empty.
Relatively, but not completely. A teenaged boy emerged from the bathroom and stared at us. At Lena, mostly. She still looked more tree than human. Then there were the prisoners, dressed in their jumpsuits and looking as conspicuous and out of place as a moose on a motorcycle. He coughed and backed away. “Jesus. What have you guys been smoking out here?”
“Which way to the nearest exit?” asked Lena.
The kid pointed down the hall. “Are you here for the yearbook planning meeting?” he asked dubiously.
“Book club,” I said, which triggered another coughing fit. When I could speak again, I added, “I think we got the date wrong.”
“Right.” He backed away.
As soon as he was out of sight, I wrapped both hands around Excalibur’s healing scabbard. Lena doled out healing potion to the rest of our company. Tear gas still permeated our clothes and hair, but this should help the worst of the damage.
I twisted to get one of the books I kept on hand for emergencies. We’d dealt with most of the magic-dampening, but the prisoners could still be carrying active tracking chips. Between the devourer and creating our escape, I’d redlined my magic, but I needed to create one more spell before I could rest. Thankfully, this one was basic libriomancy.