by Tom Larcombe
“What's going on here?” Amber said. “I thought magic interfered with machinery and electronics?”
“I think that's old tech in there. More solid state than electronics. Residual spells, maybe even active magic, shouldn't cause a problem with it,” Charles replied. “But what are we going to do about these guys?”
“I'll handle it,” Greg said. “They may be out of the range of one of the sleep crystals, but I can do it manually and get all of them.”
Greg didn't lean out into the room this time, he sat down on the floor, leaning back against the wall.
“What is he doing?” Amber asked Charles softly.
“I think he's going to send his consciousness in and use that to set the spell on them. Then they won't have a chance to see him. But Greg doesn't like doing that too much, he said the only time he tried that standing up, he fell over.”
Greg's body had slumped limply against the wall, almost as though he were unconscious. As Amber watched, tension returned to his body and his eyes opened.
“Got it, let's get in quick and secure them,” Greg said.
Charles went through the door, rounding the corner while digging into the backpack he'd brought along. As he pulled out short lengths of rope, he tossed them on the ground next to the sleeping men. Then he went still and Amber watched with wonder as the rope sections slithered on the ground like snakes, surrounding the wrists and ankles of the men. The cut ends of the rope sections found one another and fused together, tightening down to hold wrists and ankles tight.
She glanced up at something that sounded like tearing cloth.
“Don't want them making a ruckus,” Charles said, tearing off another strip of duct tape.
The men's mouths were quickly sealed with the tape, but Charles stayed with each one for a few seconds, making sure they could breath okay through their noses.
“There,” he said, “all taken care of. Now, let's see what they're doing in here.”
He walked over to Greg, who was standing at one set of the controls, examining it.
“I've got no clue,” Greg said. “Maybe you can figure it out.”
He walked off and started looking around the rest of the room while Charles examined the controls. Meanwhile Amber was staring at the autoclaves.
“So, what do these things do?” she asked.
“They create heat and pressure,” Charles answered absently, “Kind of like a pressure cooker. Except the regular ones are more than that, they use them to sterilize things. These are even larger still, there's lots of industrial uses for autoclaves. They're used to make things like composites.”
“Or quartz crystals,” Gregory added. “Like this one.”
Amber turned to see Gregory holding a perfectly clear quartz crystal the size of his forearm.
“There's a rack of these things over there,” he added. “I remember Bell Labs and a bunch of other tech companies working on how to make these back in the day. They used to be prohibitively expensive though. I guess not so much now though, there are hundreds of them on that rack.”
“So why would they go to all the trouble of hiding what they're doing if that's all it is,” Amber said.
“I've heard rumors circulating about these things. They've been selling them at a price to undercut the natural ones most wizards use,” Charles said. “I tried one once, didn't much like it, seemed harder to pull the energy out.”
“I tried one too,” Greg added, “but the thing gave me the willies for some reason. I put it down almost as soon as I picked it up. I'll stick with the natural ones myself.”
“Yeah, but think how much you must be able to store in one of these,” Amber said.
“You'd be surprised. It isn't as much as you think. This one would only hold about as much magical energy as that one you stole from me temporarily,” Charles said. “Something about the natural ones forming near ambient magic makes their internal alignment better for energy storage.”
“Then why make them at all?”
“Remember I told you that replacing crystals was expensive and took a while? I guess there's a lot of wizards out there who don't want to wait and are willing to settle for these. Plus, the prices I heard quoted on them were a lot cheaper also. As a matter of fact, I don't know how they'd make a profit on them with the setup they've got going here. It doesn't look cheap to either run or have developed in the first place.”
“Development is a sunk cost though,” Greg said. “If they're using mind controlled people for labor then there might not be any more cost except the electric bill. Let me see what I can find out.”
He walked over to one of the bound and gagged men and stopped, staring at him.
“Wow, that's a lot different than the guard,” he said after a few minutes.
“Brain not as messed up?” Amber asked.
“No, this was an incredibly skillful job. There are controls in place, but whoever did it left the area of this man's technical expertise virtually untouched. So he has all the skills he had before, but his free will has been pruned to practically nothing. He'll do what he's told to the best of his ability and keep himself alive and healthy. But any decision that doesn't have to do with health, survival, or his job here? Forget it, he can't make it and can probably only barely verbalize it to whoever he'd have to ask permission from.”
Amber started wandering around the room, not wanting to be anywhere near the men who were controlled like that.
Even the idea gives me the creeps, she thought. I can't imagine what life would be like that way, don't want to either.
She went over to the rack of crystals Greg had pointed out and noticed a door in the wall behind them, a very wide door.
“Guys, did either of you notice stairs anywhere? I think there's a freight elevator over here,” she said.
“No,” Charles replied, “but there are a few doors here we haven't tried. Probably they'd be behind one of those doors.”
“Well, if we know what's going on in here now, do we want to see what else they might be doing in this place?”
“She's got a plan,” Greg said. “I think we've lost the urgency we used to feel about missions like this. It used to be get in and out as fast as we could. But this time we're taking a lot longer.”
“It doesn't help me feel any urgency knowing that anyone who walks by out front won't see the building for what it is,” Charles said. “But I know what you mean. Let's check some doors.”
A few minutes later they found a door that led to stairs going up. The three of them headed upstairs where they found another locked door. This one only took a key and Charles made quick work of it. When he peered through the door Amber heard his low whistle.
She took a quick glance herself and understood right away. The entire floor was lit by the light of the moon and stars, and so were the crystals that nearly filled it. They gave off a dim glow, but the light of the moon and stars was brighter still.
The ceiling was made of some sort of clear plastic, except for a small portion in the very center of the room. That area was surrounded by what looked like a steel and concrete pillar with wires running up it to the roof. At the terminus of the wires were a whole series of slots, filled with crystals that gave off a brighter glow.
So, are those charged crystals being used to power something? she wondered.
Charles had spotted it also.
“I think we found out how they're affecting a large area. I'm betting that leads to some artifact or something that broadcasts a spell,” he said gesturing towards the steel and concrete pillar.
A noise, like someone stumbling over something, put them all on their guard. Greg and Charles moved out into the room, one to either side of the door. Amber stayed put, trying to see into the darkness of the far corners from her position in the doorway.
She reached to her belt and triggered one of the darksight crystals. Instantly she could see through the darkness into the back corners of the room.
“There are a bunch of guy
s on mattresses back in that corner on the left,” she said.
Greg, who was on that side, immediately tensed and looked towards that corner himself.
In the other far corner, she saw a single person who was seemingly drunk or had something affecting him in a similar fashion. He was stumbling around, holding onto the receiver of a phone.
“There's someone on the phone in the other corner back there,” she said.
Her hand crept into her bag, touching the solidity of the revolver she'd brought. Her fingers wrapped around the grip and clutched it tightly.
The phone receiver struck the ground as the person holding it threw it down. He stumbled out onto the main floor, kicking as many of the crystals on it as he could.
“I won't! I can't!” the man screamed.
With him out of the corner, Amber could see him better. He looked young, somewhere in his twenties, but she knew that if he was a wizard that could be deceiving. He also looked emaciated to the point where his cheekbones seemed like they were about to tear through the skin that covered them.
He raged on and on, kicking crystals this way and that.
“I won't fucking do it any more!” he screamed.
“You can't make me do it any more! I refuse, just go ahead and kill me!”
Crystals went flying as the man fell to the ground and started thrashing. His body slowly stilled before he started trying to stand up again. His face looked different now, as though there were someone else's personality behind it.
“Charles, look out. I think there's something wrong with him,” Amber called.
The man raised his hands and fire licked his fingers as he closed them into fists. The flickering flames formed into balls surrounding the man's fists, then he drew back an arm as though he were about to throw a baseball.
The sound of a smashing crystal preceded his fall to the floor again. Greg had come across the room and thrown a sleep crystal at the man's feet.
But his raging had wakened the others in the back corner. Now they were coming out into the main room, but they weren't doing anything hostile, yet.
Greg was kneeling alongside the man he'd put to sleep so he didn't see them, but Charles did, and Amber certainly did. The little arcs of electricity racing along the lead person's body lit him up quite well. It also showed the woman beside him carrying a long blade that seemed to be made of ice. She couldn't quite make out the third person, he was behind the other two, but she was sure that he was dangerous also considering his companions.
As she watched, the floor rose and clamped down on the ankles of the man with the arcs of electricity. He stopped abruptly and roared his anger. He extended his arms and the arcs of electricity started racing down them. When they reached his hands, he flicked a finger towards Charles, sending a small bolt of sizzling blue-white power through the air.
Amber couldn't watch what happened next. She pulled her gaze away from Charles and back to the man with the electricity. It looked like he was gathering up more energy to throw, and this time he was looking at her. The woman with the ice blade was moving across the room towards Charles, daintily picking her way through the crystals. The third person had their hands on the man Charles had trapped and, as she watched, the materials of the floor began drawing back down off of the trapped man's ankles.
She pulled the revolver out of her bag and pointed it at the man who was restoring the floor to its natural state. She could see him beside the trapped man. She lifted the revolver with both hands and shifted slightly, aiming at the wizard who'd thrown the small lightning bolts since he seemed to be a bigger danger.
If I aim right towards him, even if I miss to one side I'll still hit the other guy, she thought.
Amber squeezed the trigger.
The roar of the revolver going off was deafening in the enclosed area. Her ears rang and the echoes continued to bounce around the room for several moments. She didn't see either of the men she'd been aiming at fall, so she aimed and squeezed the trigger again, and again, and again. Only when the hammer came down on an empty cylinder did she stop squeezing the trigger.
She found herself crouched on the floor, having dropped when something whistled by close to her head.
Ricochet, it had to be a ricochet, she thought. Bright idea bitch, shooting a gun in a room whose walls are made of concrete.
* * *
* * *
Chapter 15
The small bolt of lightning that struck Charles in the shoulder hurt badly enough that he nearly forgot his stance on cursing.
Crap! That hurts like nobody's business. I can't let it distract me though, that blade looks sharp.
The woman coming towards him carried an icy blade in her hand. It was long and thin, the blade for a foot behind the pointed tip looking as though it were razor sharp and able to do some serious damage as well.
She walked towards him with a measured pace, her eyes focused on him without blinking. It would have appeared that she wasn't paying any attention to where she walked, except she was using careful foot placement designed to leave the crystals undisturbed. He waited and when she side-stepped to the clear area of floor next to the central pillar, he acted.
The steel and concrete of the pillar weren't the easiest things to deal with. The further from their original state, the harder it was to work them with Earth Magic, and both the steel and concrete had been processed repeatedly. Nevertheless they bent to his will and power.
As the woman with the ice sword stepped close to the pillar, its materials elongated towards her. They stretched out and wrapped around her waist, holding her tightly and stopping her progress towards Charles.
Now what do I do with her, I can't just leave—
His train of thought was derailed by a flurry of gunshots. The sound was enough to set his ears ringing and his eyes watering, but he still looked around for their source.
She didn't, did she? he thought, catching sight of Amber in a crouch in the doorway.
A moment of scrutiny and he knew that she had. The revolver they'd found in her parents' apartment was in her hands as she sagged to the floor.
That was loud, I wonder if the protection spell on this place is strong enough to prevent anyone from calling the police if they heard the gunshots. Or maybe it wouldn't have let them hear the shots at all, I don't know. But we'd better get out of here pretty soon, it sounded like that Fire Wizard made a phone call before he snapped.
Greg was still kneeling over the Fire Wizard that had lost control. His head was turned towards Amber, so he was probably also placing the gunfire. When he did, he turned back to the wizard lying on the floor in front of him.
A glance across the room showed Charles that the Air Wizard that had tossed the lightning bolt at him, along with the Earth Wizard that had been trying to free him were out of it. Motion caught his eye as he tried to figure out what to do with them.
The woman with the ice blade was apparently a Water Wizard. As he watched, the concrete portion of the pillar he'd wrapped around her dissolved in a cloud of dust, the concrete powdering as she removed all the moisture from it. The steel portion, on the other hand, was still wrapped around her waist.
The room reverberated with a loud 'Clang!' as she brought her ice blade down on the steel. A chip of ice flew off of it, but at the same time so did a piece of the steel.
She must've reinforced that with even more magic for it to be that strong. Now what do I do with her? It'll take her a few minutes to get out of that, even with her sword, but...
He moved over to Amber, who was still crouched on the floor, scanning the room wildly with her eyes.
“You did good Amber, get a hold of yourself though,” he said.
She started to swing the revolver towards him before realizing who he was. When she saw him standing right next to her, she finally relaxed.
“You did good, even if I did tell you to leave that in the apartment,” he said.
She heaved a sigh and straightened.
“Did
I kill them?” she asked, wincing slightly.
“I'll check in a moment, but do me a favor and reload, assuming you brought more ammunition.”
She hit the latch and swung the cylinder out, then rummaged in her bag and pulled out a handful of rounds. As she started to insert them into the gun, Charles moved off.
“Keep an eye on that one,” he said gesturing towards the woman trapped by the steel of the pillar.
Then in a much louder voice he added.
“If she breaks free, shoot her like you did her friends.”
The clanging sound that had been a constant background noise stopped abruptly as the Water Wizard turned to look at Charles. She scanned the room and noticed all three of the other wizards that had been in the room on the ground, then she focused on the large revolver that Amber was reloading.
Her face had been a blank mask up to this point, but now the mask shattered. She dropped the sword on the floor where it also shattered, into hundreds of tiny ice shards. As Charles walked towards the Earth and Air Wizards the Water Wizard broke into tears.
I'll take care of her in a minute, Charles thought.
He knelt by the two wizards Amber had shot at. The Air Wizard had a hole in the middle of his chest and Charles was pretty sure it had struck his heart. One of his arms had been hit as well, but the hole in his chest was what had killed him if Charles were to guess.
The Earth Wizard wasn't dead, he'd been hit in the arm by a bullet, but it was only a graze.
I'm guessing she overloaded his shields pumping that many bullets into them. Knocked him out from the effort. It doesn't look like any of these people would have much energy to spare. They all look half-starved.
As he was standing, a guttural roar of outrage filled the room. When he traced its source, he saw the Fire Wizard that had snapped coming to his feet and looking around the room. The man's face was a contorted mask, emotions flickering across it rapidly. Greg was lying on the ground next to him, trying to stand up.
The man spotted the Water Wizard trapped by the steel loop Charles had wrapped around her and his face settled into a single emotion: hatred.