Spies in the Dark (The Nightcrafters Book 2)

by Ramsey Isler

  “No,” Newton said. “He went in there on his own.”

  I continued watching the video while Newton talked. Brockton pulled out his sidearm — a standard issue Glock model. Kellar looked at the weapon, then to Brockton’s face, then back at the weapon. The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly.

  Brockton walked up to Kellar with a cowboy’s swagger. He placed the muzzle of his gun right on Kellar’s temple and said, “You gonna talk?”

  That’s when the fun started.

  The thing about guns — the thing that Brockton was too dumb to realize — is that they’re really dark inside. The firing chamber alone is dark enough for even a mid-level nightcrafter to do some damage, and when Brockton put the muzzle against Kellar’s head, he created a perfectly dark environment for Kellar to work his magic in.

  I don’t even know exactly what Kellar did next — the technique was far beyond my skill level. All I know is that one second, Brockton was standing there with his gun in his hand, and the next second the gun had exploded into a ball of black smoke. Even the intense rays from the lamps couldn’t penetrate the smoke, and Kellar must have used that ball of darkness to pull dark material out of the Rift and create more smoke until the entire room was filled with a black cloud. The containment chamber window, made of plexiglass strong enough to stop rifle bullets, disintegrated in an instant and smoke flooded the control room with the force of a tsunami.

  Then the video cut out.

  “That’s all we have,” Newton said. “Protocol dictated an immediate evacuation in case of an escape. The few people stationed at the lightbox beat it out of there as fast as they could. Good thing they did, too. It didn’t take long for Kellar to turn the building into nothing.”

  “So what are we supposed to do next?” I asked.

  “We could try to find Kellar and bring him back,” Newton said.

  “There’s no way in hell that’s going to happen,” I said. “Do you see that crater? He’s a master nightcrafter. The only reason we even captured him the first time was because of luck and quick thinking. He’ll be on guard this time”

  “We have to try to do something,” Newton said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because he knows where the RID is.”

  “Oh . . . shit,” I said. He was right. Kellar had been there when we put Newton’s Rift Interference Device on the other side and cut off the ability for other nightcrafters to enter the Rift anywhere within its ten mile effective radius.

  “Shit indeed,” Newton said. “You can bet he’s going to try to find a way to break that thing as soon as he can. He might even be headed there now.”

  “But with the RID in place he can’t phase over there,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Newton said. “You guys know how to pull things out of the Rift, and the RID has no effect on that spell. Kellar knows exactly where that device is on the other side. That’s where he’s going. No doubt.”

  “We can’t go back there,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. Kellar would certainly expect us to show up there, and if we were stupid enough to try something it would just be a matter of time before more people ended up dead. Probably us.”

  “Okay then,” Newton said. “Got another suggestion?”

  “Find another hot spot. Put a new RID there.”

  “Two problems with that,” Newton said. “One, do you even know where there’s another hot spot within twenty miles?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Newton said. “Second problem: I don’t have another RID. I only had time to build one, and it’ll take me a week to build another.”

  “Then the nightcrafters will have one more week to hop in and out of the Rift,” I said. “I can live with that. But we’re not going back to that school.”

  “Fine then. You’re the expert, and with Dominique out of the picture we have a power vacuum at the moment. So we’ll go with your call. But that means you’re committing to finding another hot spot. It’s possible there may not even be another one around.”

  “I know,” I said. “But let me worry about that.”

  Newton shrugged. “Not a problem for me. I’m more than happy to let you call the shots here. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

  I didn’t like Newton’s assumption “Dominique will back. Right?”

  Newton winced and looked away. “Kal, this is . . . this is pretty bad. Brockton screwed this up on his own, but Dominique was the one who brought him in and gave him access to the lightbox.”

  “But that’s just one mistake. They can’t just cut her loose for that.” I was struggling to find the right words to make a better argument when the sound of my phone ringing derailed my train of thought. I checked the screen and it said “Unknown”.

  “Answer it,” Newton said. “It’s going to be important.”

  I tapped the answer button and put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Kai,” a gruff male voice said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Who is—”

  “You don’t need to know who I am,” the voice said. “All you need to know is this: from this moment, you and Newton are to split off from the rest of the department. You will work independently on whatever steps you feel are necessary to mitigate the damage of this situation. You will not interact with any other NATO staff, nor will you visit any official facilities until further notice. Is that clear?”

  “Uh . . . yes. It’s clear. But what about Dominique?”

  The voice was silent for a chilling moment. Then it said, “We will inform you of her replacement as soon as one has been appointed.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “So,” I said, still reeling from the shock of the phone call I’d just gotten, “Who the hell was that?”

  “One of the PDs,” Newton said with a shrug. “That’s my best guess at least. I don’t know who they are either.”

  “He said we’re no longer official members of the department. We’re on our own until they appoint Dominique’s replacement.”

  Newton just nodded. “Told you this was bad.”

  “It could get worse,” I said. “We’ve already lost Kellar, but what about Madison?”

  “She’s still in custody,” Newton said. “There are protocols in place to cover the scenario where one of the captives breaks out. Whoever is left in an official capacity in our department is going to move her just to be safe, but they’ll sedate her before that. I think . . . I think we won’t have to worry about anything going wrong with her.”

  “Until Kellar comes looking for her,” I said. “Or maybe Mater.”

  “We’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it,” Newton said. “But since neither of us are supposed to be around the facilities, we don’t have to get worried about getting caught up in the collateral damage if that happens.”

  “They can’t just kick you out of the facilities though, right? How are you going to build another RID without your lab?”

  “I’ve got an unofficial workshop setup off-site,” Newton said. “We used it in the past for some projects that needed to be completely off the books. I can build a new RID unit there.”

  “All right then,” I said. “So I guess that just leaves it up to me to find someplace for you to put the damn thing.”

  “Yup,” Newton said. “Good luck with that.” His mood was sour. It didn’t take a psychologist to see that some switch had turned off inside of him. Just a few hours ago he was all jokes and high hopes. Now he was jaded and pessimistic. He’d put on his armor again.

  “You okay?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “You know . . . if there’s something wrong you can tell me.”

  “Something wrong?” Newton said. “What could be wrong? We just let the most skilled nightcrafter in the world escape, had an entire facility blasted into nothingness, and lost the head of our department. Nothing wrong here.”

  “Look,�
�� I said, “I know it’s been one shit storm after another. I know it’s a lot to deal with. But we’ll get through this. I need you to believe that.”

  Newton laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “You know,” he said, “the funny thing is I was on my way over to your place when I got the news about Kellar. I was really happy to have a chance to just relax with you. We hadn’t been able to do that in weeks. Not since Newfoundland.”

  “Where you told me we couldn’t afford to explore certain feelings,” I said.

  “Which was true,” Newton said. “True at the time, at least. But then we captured Kellar and the RID worked and I felt like everything had just done a one eighty. The world was suddenly bright and full of possibility again. I just . . . I just thought we had it all taken care of. I thought this was almost over. I mean, I knew there were plenty of things that could still go wrong. I wasn’t blindly optimistic or anything like that. But I had reason to allow myself to hope things could be different. Now, I don’t.”

  I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true. I wanted to say some inspiring words of wisdom. But I couldn’t. Newton deserved the truth, and he was certainly capable of handling it. “It’s not over until the Rift is closed forever,” I said. “Any success we have that falls short of that is just a temporary win.”

  Newton sighed. “Yes, it would seem that is the case.”

  “But try to find another reason to hope,” I said. “We will need it.”

  “I will try,” Newton said. “I will try.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now I guess there’s nothing left for us to do but get to work.”

  Newton started the car and said, “I’ll get started on the new RID right away.”

  “And I’m going to find a new hotspot as soon as possible.”

  “How exactly do you plan on doing that?” Newton said.

  I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the door, and got out of the car. Then I leaned in through the open passenger side window and said, “I’m going to do a lot of walking.”

  * * *

  I spent the next four nights walking the streets of New York City. It’s definitely not something I’d recommend for a normal person. Even in the safest parts of the city there’s a sense of danger lurking behind every dark corner. But I didn’t stick to the safe parts. I went to all sorts of places I had no business being in. Believe it or not, I never had a single problem. No attempted muggings. No racial slurs. Not even a stink eye. The worst that happened to me were a few homeless people asking for change and one prostitute flashing her boobs in my direction.

  I did my walkabout thing at night, but during the days I slept and did research. Paranormal activity reports usually get me good information. Most things that people mistake for ghosts are actually just phenomenon from the Rift. I can’t say all of the weird shit that happens in the world can be traced back to the Rift because I certainly don’t know for sure, but I’d wager that a lot of unexplained events involved a nightcrafter in the vicinity.

  There are plenty of websites and online groups that cover paranormal happenings, so I had no shortage of research material. Most of the stuff was just ordinary ramblings of crazy people. There were, however, a fair number of reports of strange sounds in the dark. Unfortunately none of it involved the kind of recurring incidents that would be the hallmark of a Rift hotspot. Still, I visited each location just to be sure. We had too much on the line. I had to be thorough.

  But I was starting to lose it. I hadn’t had much interaction with people during my search. I was either at home during the day or wandering the streets aimlessly at night. I was a nocturnal unemployed loser. I spent my nights watching people go back and forth, heading to places to do things. But I had nowhere specific to be. Nothing concrete to do. It was a lonely existence. My parents were hidden so well I didn’t even know if they were still in the country. And my usual outlet for human contact, Newton, was busy cobbling together his new RID so I couldn’t bother him. He was my only companion, and I missed him.

  Then I had a moment.

  I was wandering a random street just after midnight when the moment struck me. Most people have had at least one “moment” — a fleeting period of time when the illusion we use to cope with daily life just falls away and our fragile resolve collapses under the weight of all our troubles. It had been a while since my last “moment”. I remember that one clearly. It happened about a week after Kellar kicked me out of the nightcrafter club and I magically appeared at home in my own bed. I remember being in the shower and wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life next. I stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out.

  This current “moment” stopped me dead in my tracks. I reached out and found a parking meter to lean on. The cool metal against my skin helped to calm me a little, but there was still a horrible feeling of anxiety and despair making my chest tight and my eyes water. I looked up to the sky, as if I’d find the answer up there somewhere. And, oddly enough, I did.

  The Empire State Building stood a mile ahead of me, a stone and metal giant dominating everything around it. The observation deck had been the subject of ghost sightings for decades. A spark of realization made me see that I’d made the mistake of thinking that hotspots would only be at ground level. But there was no reason they couldn’t be in the air too.

  The observation deck is on the 86th floor of the building — hundreds of feet up and far above almost everything else in the city. A lot of people don’t realize the observation deck is open until two in the morning on most days. In my head it seemed like the perfect place for a hot spot. Except for one possible problem: the top of the damn building is lit up like an overgrown Christmas tree most of the time.

  I usually appreciate the vivid colors from the seasonal and event-based lighting on the building. It makes the iconic structure constantly relevant. The themed lighting tradition had started sometime in the seventies, but more recently the building owners had installed a fancy computer-controlled LED system that allowed the building lights to cover a range of millions of colors in a variety of patterns, and it could all be changed instantly. There were massive lights installed on ledges on the 72nd floor and the 81st floor. But the 86th floor, which housed the main observation deck, was as dimly lit as it had been almost every night since the floor was finished many decades ago.

  As a kid I’d visited the observation deck a few times, but always in daylight. I recalled seeing pictures of the observation deck at night and it looked like it was still shrouded by shadow despite the light show beneath it. I pulled up a few reference images on my phone and my recollection was confirmed. But there was only one way to be sure.

  * * *

  Entering the lobby of New York’s most famous building always feels like stepping into a time machine. At night the place is lit with soft golden light that illuminates the beautiful imported marble in the walls and flooring. There are also murals on the ceiling that tell a story of the mechanical age, with planets and stars artistically represented as a line of gears made of 24-karat gold and aluminum leaf. On the wall above the front desk in the lobby on the Fifth Avenue side is a gleaming metal mural of the building with beams of light radiating from the mast. This building is one hundred percent old-school cool. The lobby even smells old . . . but not in a bad way. It’s a classy kind of old aroma, like an antique leather chair.

  After clearing the security checks and two elevator rides, I was on the 86th floor, right in the middle of the indoors part of the observation deck. I’d always found this part boring. It was just like being in any other tall building. The real action was outside, where you had open sky above you and no windows blocking all the sounds and sensations that come with standing nearly a quarter mile above the ground.

  I went through a door and stepped onto the 360 degree outdoor promenade. The city was far below me, and from here it looked tranquil. It was just after one in the morning on a regular, mundane Monday and millions of people were in bed resting up for another day of the rat race
. My surroundings were quiet, besides the occasional gust of wind whistling by.

  The fence along the observation deck was tall, curved inwards, and it ended in sharp points to prevent suicide jumpers from climbing it and taking one last thrill ride from the top of one of the world’s most famous buildings. The triangular gaps in the base of the suicide fence were just wide enough for me to stick my face out and look down.

  The top sections of the Empire State Building are kind of tiered like a wedding cake, and the ledges on those lower floors housed the lights that made the top of the building such a dazzling ornament in the night sky. Tonight the lights down there were beaming out a bright shade of electric blue. But, thankfully, everything was nice and dark up here on the deck.

  After I let my normal senses have their fill, I dipped into the Rift and immediately knew that my hunch had been right. This was definitely a hotspot. I extended my presence in the Rift and felt a surge of power flow through me. For a second it felt like I could lift up the whole damn building if I just knew the right spell. But the moment passed quickly, and I relaxed so I could really feel out the boundaries of this hotspot.

  That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone up here.

  I felt something stationary and roughly human-shaped disturbing the shadows. I walked over to it, and found the source of the sensation. It was a pale-faced tubby man in a dark blue uniform with an officer-style cap — a security guard on the zombie shift. I immediately felt sympathy for the poor guy. It wasn’t too long ago that I had the same job.

  “How’s it going?” I said. The guard didn’t say anything. He didn’t even blink. At first I thought he was just being a bastard, but then I kept staring at him and he wasn’t blinking at all. I waved a hand in front of him. No reaction. I knew what this was; an immobilization spell. I was just about to break the poor guy out of it when I felt a pulse through the Rift.

  “Damn it,” I said. I had just enough time to throw up a defensive field before a wall of force crashed into it like a charging rhino. Then I saw the very last thing I wanted to see up here — another nightcrafter.