by Ramsey Isler
Then my alarm rang.
I opened my eyes to a world starkly different from my dream. It was dark. It was cold. I was alone. It took a few moments for me to shake off the sleepiness, but the good feelings of the dream lingered for a while. I could have just put them out of my mind and focused on any of the many other urgent topics fighting for my attention these days. But I didn’t do that. I just relaxed and let the fading false memories hang around until the images didn’t seem so real.
I’m fine with these dreams. Dreams are safe. I can dream all I want and nothing bad happens. Nobody gets hurt. No complications.
The clock on the wall read noon. I had decided to sleep in before heading out to the Empire State Building to install the new RID. After thinking about it for a while, I figured Newton had a good point. This new kind of aerial hot spot was still something I didn’t have a lot of experience with and conditions were different up there. It might take a lot longer than we wanted to get the RID working perfectly, so it would be best if I were well-rested and energized for a possible long night of nightcrafting.
We had agreed to meet at the building tonight, so I had plenty of time to kill before the big event. I rolled out of bed and fixed myself a quick bowl of cereal, then I plopped on my couch and turned the TV on. I hadn’t had the chance to watch TV in ages, so I flipped channels like a hyperactive kid who had missed his last few Ritalin doses. I landed on an old film with wardrobe and set design that were clearly from the eighties. I hit the info button on the remote control and saw that this channel was running an all day James Bond movie marathon. I tossed the remote aside and settled in for hours of classic spy movies.
I fell asleep during A View to a Kill but woke up again during License to Kill and watched a few more movies. By the time the opening sequence of Casino Royale was over, it was time to leave and meet up with Newton. Hours of watching the most famous spy franchise in the world had reminded me of how cool my job actually was, even though I doubted I’d ever be as comfortable with killing bad guys as 007.
It was just past midnight and the moon was blocked by a thick layer of clouds. A storm was coming in a few hours, but I could already feel its presence. It was pretty windy and the air smelled like rain even though none had fallen yet. When I arrived at the Empire State Building lobby, Newton was already there with a few boxes. He was having what appeared to be a friendly chat with one of the security guards. When he saw me he waved me over.
“This is the partner I was talking about,” Newton said to the guard. “Now that he’s here we’ll just go up and start testing everything.”
Newton and I packed everything into the elevator and made our way up. I cast a featherweight spell on all the equipment in the privacy of the cramped space. “The cover story seems to be working,” Newton said. “They closed down the whole observation deck for us and there aren’t any guards up there. The operation is an unmitigated success so far.”
After two elevator rides, we opened the doors to the observation deck. Fierce wind hit us hard and sent our jackets flapping. The RID, having a featherweight spell on it, slammed into the back of the elevator and sent a metallic twang through the night air before it was drowned out by the screaming wind.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Did that break anything?”
“Thankfully not,” Newton said as he made a cursory examination. “Let’s get this over with quickly.”
“Are you sure you can keep this thing in one spot with this weather?” I asked as we pulled everything outside.
“It’s built to handle wind,” Newton said. “I factored in gusts up to thirty miles per hour. Everything should be fine. Let’s just get this done so we can get the hell out of here.”
We grabbed the RID and moved farther out to the observation deck. I felt a wave of nausea as we walked closer to the security fence. I hadn’t been back up here since the incident. I was coming to terms with that, but I wasn’t quite there yet. My brain conjured up an image of a woman falling along the building in slow motion. I replaced it with thoughts of kittens. That worked for a couple of seconds. When it stopped working I just switched my attention to Newton’s face. The wind had blown his hair in every direction and the nighttime chill had brought a flush to his cheeks. But all his attention was on his job, and his focus helped me find mine.
“Is this a good spot?” I asked. We were roughly in the middle of the eastern side of the observation deck.
“I think so,” Newton said. “It’s open and gives us some wiggle room if it moves. We want to try to make sure the device will stay above the observation deck floor even it moves a little bit. I built in an automatic position adjustment system so it will try not to get too far from its original position, but I’m not entirely sure how reliable that’s going to be on the other side.”
“It’ll be good enough,” I said. “Let’s get this done.”
We were just setting up the giant hummingbird wings when I felt an immense presence in the Rift. It was so overwhelming it almost knocked me over. I gathered my composure and frantically searched for the source.
Then the RID imploded.
It was one of the freakiest things I’d ever seen. It was like an invisible hand had crunched it like an empty soda can. The innards of the device sparked and popped and smoked. Newton looked at me with wide eyes. I was just as stunned as he was.
Two figures made of inky smoke appeared out of the darkness. I tried to think of something to do, anything. But I couldn’t move anymore. Something had frozen me in place, and my access to the Rift had been completely cut off. I was helpless. The two shadows solidified and took on human shapes. As their forms shifted from smoke to flesh, familiar features appeared. I knew these people.
“We have a lot to talk about,” Kellar said. He was completely serious. There was no sign of his casual cockiness or manipulative humor. My heart was pounding in my chest. I could hardly breathe. I thought I was going to pass out any minute. I could still move my eyes, and caught a glimpse of Newton frozen in position just like I was.
“We could rough them up a little bit first,” Madison said. Unlike Kellar, her face was anything but stoic. Her hair swirled in the wind, framing her snarling face and making her look absolutely insane with rage. Whatever spell Kellar had cast on them to transform them into flying shadows hadn’t quite ended yet. Her eyes had not yet fully shifted from her previous shadowy form and her eyeballs were pits of smoke spouting twisted blackness into the night. For the first time I saw her not just as a nightcrafter, but a witch.
“We could,” Kellar said. “But it wouldn’t make me feel any better.”
“It would make me feel better,” Madison said.
“We will both just have to deal with our pain in other ways,” Kellar said. “Now let’s . . .”
Kellar’s voice trailed off. There was something else in the wind. Some new sound — a droning whine. Then I realized that a shadow had fallen over Kellar’s face. It was already dark out here so something must have blocked the dim moonlight. Then the shadow passed, and Kellar’s face was in view again. His expression was no longer stoic. He was confused. He opened his mouth to speak.
“What the fu—”
A bright, burning light washed out the world completely. My eyes stung like hell, completely unprepared to adjust from the darkness to extreme light. Kellar and Madison shouted things to each other, but I couldn’t understand. The heavy weight that had been holding me down was lifted. I could move again. I reached out to Newton, desperately hoping that I could blindly find him. I yelled his name. I felt fingers graze mine. A sharp CRACK split the air, cutting through the din for just a moment before the overwhelming and mysterious mechanical whine resumed its dominance.
A pair of hands yanked on my jacket collar, pulling me away from the light. A streak of red interrupted the whiteness for just a moment, then it disappeared in the blinding brightness. The hands at my neck kept pulling me forward. I couldn’t see where I was going, but I followed.
We ran. I don’t think I’ve ever run that fast in my life. My arm was warm, warmer than it should have been in this chilly wind. We rounded a corner outside of the reach of the harsh light and the night came rushing back into existence. Kellar and Madison were there. Newton was right next to me. His hand was covered in blood.
“You’re hurt!” I yelled.
Newton just shook his head. “No, it’s yours. It’s your blood.”
That’s when the obvious finally clicked in place for my adrenaline soaked brain. I’d been shot.
Kellar waved his hand towards the tall security fence enclosing the outdoor observation deck. Metal bars evaporated like icicles hit by a flamethrower, leaving a gaping hole in the gate.
“Hold on,” Kellar said as he embraced me tightly, “this is going to be crazy.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Saving your goddamn life,” Kellar growled. Then he pushed us off the building.
The sensation of free fall sent a surge of terror right through me. I screamed so loud my throat burned worse than my arm. The observation deck rapidly retreated from us, but something else was up there. There was some floating machine beaming out streams of impossibly bright light that obliterated the night.
In an instant the world shifted. The distant light of the skyscrapers surrounding us disappeared. There was an enveloping blackness; complete and unending. I stopped yelling just long enough to hear Newton screaming somewhere close. He was just as terrified as I was. But then our free fall slowed, and soon we made a semi-soft landing that left me on my back. But this wasn’t earth, or grass, or stone we were lying on. As I lay there, gasping for breath and trying to calm down, I realized we had gone through the Rift.
I felt a furious presence, a rapid cascade of waves through the darkness. I knew it was Madison before she even said, “What the hell was that thing?”
“I don’t know,” Kellar said. “But I am pretty sure who sent it.”
“What’s going on?”
“Oh shut the hell up,” Madison said. Her fist hit my chin, hard and fast. My head swirled, and I felt like I was falling again even though I was already on what passed for ground on the other side of the Rift. I thought I heard Newton yelling again, his voice angrier than I’d ever heard it, and Madison was yelling too. But it was all muffled and distant. As Madison’s punch sent aftershocks through my brain, I floated off to some other place where things didn’t hurt so bad.
CHAPTER 7
When my senses returned, I could see that I was in a dim room. There was light here, but it wasn’t much. My arm was stiff. I looked down and found it heavily bandaged with white gauze. I was draped across an armchair with hard cushions that offered no comfort.
I heard soft footsteps on cheap carpet and craned my neck. Kellar was approaching. My fight or flight instincts were just about to kick into overdrive when I saw Newton following casually behind him. I figured if Newton wasn’t dead, tied up, or freaking out, then the situation was a lot better than I could have hoped.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“A random office building on Wall Street,” Kellar said.
“And why are we here?”
“Regrouping,” Kellar said. “That was a nasty surprise. We almost didn’t make it.”
“What the hell was that anyway?” This time I directed the question at Newton.
“A drone,” Newton said. “A drone with an array of high-powered lamps and at least one gun mounted on it.”
“Something you built?” I asked.
Newton just shook his head.
“Who patched me up?”
“I did,” Kellar said. “There was a first aid kit in the kitchen here but I did most of the work with magic. The bullet just clipped your arm so you’ll be fine. You’ll have a small scar though.”
“Better than being dead,” I said.
“That’s still an option,” said a voice to my right. I turned and saw Madison standing there, leaning against a wall with her arms folded.
“Nice to see you again,” I said to her. “Enjoying your freedom?”
“I was,” Madison said. “Until I realized you assholes put a tracker in me. Do you know how much it hurts to rip out your own stitches and dig a little piece of metal out of you?”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
She pulled out a pocket knife and said, “Let me give you an idea.”
“Madison,” Kellar said. “Stop.”
She turned to him with fierce eyes. “Why?”
“We’re better than that.”
Newton laughed. He walked up to me and sat on the floor, cross-legged. I could see him better now. One of the lenses from his glasses was missing, but he seemed intact otherwise. He smiled at me and that helped ease my urge to run away, but I also felt a growing suspicion. There had to be a reason why Kellar and Madison hadn’t done something unspeakable to us yet. I figured that Newton had the advantage of being conscious for the last god knows how many minutes, so it would be best if I just shut up and let him do most of the talking.
Newton seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. He turned to Kellar and said, “Mind telling us how you knew where we’d be?”
“Someone tipped us off,” Kellar said. “Anonymously.”
“Someone like who?” Newton asked.
“We don’t know,” Kellar said. “That’s what anonymous means. But the message was clear. Your little team of idiots was going to put the whole damn world in danger.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “You don’t know what we do.”
“Actually,” Kellar said, “I already know everything about your organization. I know you work with NATO.”
I could feel my heart start thumping in my chest and an electric tingle creep up my neck. I looked at Newton. He still had his poker face on. I was impressed.
Kellar continued. “I already know about Dominique, and your Rift Interference Device, and your map of the Rift’s spread. I know it all.”
I didn’t bother to try to hide my surprise. I’m sure I must have looked like an idiot sitting there with my eyes and mouth wide open. There were a million things running through my brain and I tried to get my mouth to work properly so I could vocalize at least a few of them, but all I could stumble out was, “H-How?”
“Someone told me,” Kellar said. “It was the same person who informed us about your attempts to install a new device at the Empire State Building tonight. It’s the nightcrafter hiding in your ranks.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Newton flash a quick look in my direction. Kellar loved being the smartest man in the room, and he had us at an information disadvantage once again. If he was telling the truth, Cecil had been right to be obsessed about the nightcrafter we had detected in the office months ago. But I wasn’t going to tell Kellar any of that. There was a chance there were some things he still didn’t know.
“How do you know it’s a nightcrafter?” Newton asked.
“The messages were sent with a very clever spell and it involved complicated magic that I know Kal isn’t incapable of,” Kellar said. “Whoever it is, they know the nightcraft and they know it better than most. They also know the inner workings of your organization better than most. The level of detail they sent us was surprising to say the least.”
“Well that’s . . . terrifying,” Newton said. “I might regret asking this later, but . . . if you know so much about what we’re doing, why are we still alive?”
“Because we find ourselves on the same side,” Kellar said. “You might have noticed that the machine sent to kill us wasn’t careful about picking targets. It was trying to kill Madison and I, but it was aiming at you boys as well.”
“That might have just been bad programming,” Newton said.
“And who wrote that program?” Kellar asked. “Was it you?”
It was a good question. Even I wasn’t sure. But Newton sadly shook his head, and I had my answer.
“Of course it wasn’t you,” Kella
r said. “You’d probably never even seen that thing before. It was all done without your knowledge. A deadly machine meant for the sole purpose of killing nightcrafters doesn’t seem like your style, Newton.”
“So you believe somebody set us all up?” I asked.
“It’s not a matter of believing, you dumbass,” Madison said. “It’s a plain fact. Somebody knew that you would be up on the observation deck tonight and they told us, knowing that we’d go and try to stop you. Then they tried to get rid of us all at the same time.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” I said. “From what you’re telling me, this alleged nightcrafter spy is trying to help you. What makes you think they would just turn around and try to kill you?”
Madison and Kellar exchanged serious looks. There was something wrong. I could see it in Kellar’s face even though he was trying to be intimidating. There was sadness in his eyes, or maybe it was grief.
“Mater is dead,” he said.
Newton still had his game face on, and he was inspiring me to do the same. I felt like I was starting to get a grip on my emotions, even as everything I thought I knew seemed to be crumbling to pieces. Madison and Kellar looked at us like they were waiting for us to respond to this latest news, but we just sat there.
“She got a call about her nephew being in a serious accident,” Madison said when it was clear we weren’t going to say anything. “She went to her brother’s house in Trenton. As soon as she stepped on the doorstep she got a bullet in the chest.”
No one spoke for a while after that. The room was so quiet it was like we’d all just been frozen by some spell. My mind raced with questions. How could this have happened? Did Cecil do it? Was it someone else? Why would Kellar even tell us this? I was totally lost in my thoughts until everything coalesced into one simple statement that summed it all up. I looked right into Madison’s eyes.