Fortunate, that, considering how many ley lines there were in the world. “There has to be a cause.”
“Heck yeah. And for a buildup that fast? That powerful? It had to be something major.” Cameron scratched at his chin. “Which is why everyone is so confused.”
Because something that big would leave an obvious footprint, so of course they would be able to find the cause. It all sounded well in theory, but it wasn’t panning out in reality. “The thing that really confuses me is why the ley line right next to it was nearly robbed of power. It was like one of them had been drained to feed into the other.”
“That’s exactly what it looked like. Only we didn’t find any connection between the two. After experts spent two weeks looking for it, I’d think they would have found one, if it was there.”
So did she. “You realize that only leaves one real possibility left, right?”
“Someone did it on purpose.” Cameron paused and glanced at her, blue eyes troubled. “I know. It’s what everyone is thinking, but no one seems to want to say it out loud.”
Noriko had noticed that herself. The words just hovered throughout the station, there, but never given voice. “It’s scary to think about. I mean, we’re not talking about one person, but two in order to do that. So at least two people that are insane enough to mess with a ley line like that. How long would it take for someone to do that, I wonder?”
“Depends on how powerful they are. A few days? It’s hard to say.”
It was rather hard to guess when she didn’t know the players involved. “Are we absolutely certain that this wasn’t somehow natural? Or caused by something else? I really prefer it to be that instead of two crazy people running around making bombs out of the ley lines.”
“You and me both, partner, but it doesn’t look like it’s natural. At least, I know several people are actively researching this, and they haven’t been able to link anything to it. When they’re looking that hard, I would think they’d have found it, if it could be found.”
Unfortunately, he was right. Noriko let it lay and didn’t try to keep the conversation going. She found it far easier to watch him build his ridiculous sand castle instead.
It was impressive, really, what he was building. It stood four stories high (in sandcastle architecture) with turrets, battlements, and even a moat with a drawbridge. She walked around the area, getting a good look at it all. Maybe she should take a picture, send it to her siblings. They’d get a kick out of seeing something like this.
“Don’t step in my hole,” Cameron warned her.
Hole? Stopping dead, she studied the area with a quick sweep of her eyes and realized that Cameron had only been taking sand from one spot. In fact, he’d gone quite deep, past the normal sandy topsoil and more toward the bedrock. “I’m seeing volcanic rock.”
“There’s lava, granite, and pegmatite, too,” he informed her, still sculpting away at his castle turrets.
She stared hard at the ground, the picture slowly becoming clearer. He wasn’t just playing. Oh, it looked like it, but he had obviously been paying attention as he ‘mined’ for materials because he knew exactly what he was unearthing. Had this whole elaborate exercise been for a purpose? To not only practice with her, but to get a better understanding of this desert landscape?
Noriko turned to study her partner. He still looked like he was about five, on a beach, playing in the sand. If one just looked at his expression, he could be dismissed as being silly. But he had never once faltered in taking power smoothly from her, and he had obviously been paying attention to the land under his feet, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to rattle off what types of rocks were around them. This man was not the airhead he pretended to be.
It would behoove her to remember that.
To herself, in her native Japanese, she murmured, “I cannot take you lightly.”
Cameron’s head came up and he hummed out in a questioning tone, “Wha’?”
Shaking her head, she said instead, “I want to take a photo.”
“A commemoration photo? Great idea. After that, I guess we should head back for the office.”
Noriko felt like she was baking, so escaping the desert for her nice cool office sounded good to her. She made a mental note to talk with her captain quietly at some point too and assure him that while she still didn’t quite understand Cameron’s sense of humor, she had no problem partnering with the man. Having someone that could connect to her like this was a rare find, and she wasn’t about to let go of him.
Noriko focused on not only charging her right hand, magnetizing it, but also in keeping the power ratio with her other hand and feet. If she lost track of any of them she’d lose traction, and, even if there were a mat under her, it would be quite the fall. She was already eight or nine feet up.
Someone, at some point, had thoughtfully put a training gym together for the police and members of the Gældorcræft Forces to use. It had the usual weights, exercise machines, and so forth, but one side also had a climbing wall. For her practice purposes, the climbing wall was rather useless, but she’d grabbed the mats under them and stacked them up two deep before using the metal support beam nearby.
Half the reason she was climbing was routine, but the other half was because she needed a distraction from her own thoughts. Seeing the ley lines two weeks ago, so uneven and threatening to explode, still gave her the occasional nightmare. The ley line by itself had enough power in it to react like two tons of dynamite. If it had gone off, it would have rearranged the landscape for miles in every direction. That didn’t even take into consideration how the power would have ricocheted down the connecting ley lines, setting them off as well. It would be like a very badly played game of dominoes. A destructive game at that. And if one ley line could go haywire without any obvious reason, others could too.
And that thought scared the living daylights out of her.
Yesterday she and Cameron had been given a tour of the Air Force Research Lab nearby. It was then that she saw how extensive and large all of the ley lines in California really were. The ones near the Lab were massive, like underground rivers instead of little streams. She was still questioning the wisdom of building a research facility on top of two of them. Certainly, they had their own GF team stationed there to keep a close eye on things, but—
“Whoa!”
Her concentration snapped and Noriko lost her grip, falling toward the mat. She barely had time to gasp, not to mention react, when something hard and firm caught her a foot off the floor.
She recognized the arms wrapped around her chest all too well, and the deep voice that chuckled in her ear. “What kind of crazy trust exercise was that?”
This man was bad for her heart. In the time she’d known him, he consistently showed up in her blind spot and scared the life right out of her. Not that she was going to let him know that. She took three seconds to get her breath back before saying, “Can you please stop sneaking up on me?”
“What? It’s all good, I caught you, didn’t I?” He set her on the floor, gently, as if that last foot to solid ground would hurt her. “You gotta tell me how you were doing that. It was like magic.”
“It wasn’t.” She could understand why he thought it was, though. By definition, only Dwolcræftas could actually utilize magic, hence why they were called that. Turning, Noriko looked up at him. “There’s just a trick to it. I let out the smallest amount of power possible through my hands and feet, right next to metal, and it magnetizes the power enough to where I can connect to the beam. But all I’m doing is connecting to and releasing power; I’m not actually doing anything with it.”
“Never met a Mægen that could do that.” He walked to the beam and let out a trace of power through his hand, obviously trying to duplicate what she had been doing. “Huh. It really does magnetize fast.”
Oh? Her instructions had been beyond basic, but he’d figured out the exact nuance needed already? Well, he was a D-4, she really shouldn’t underestimate his
ability to adapt. Rankings were only partially based on power levels. Knowledge and intelligence also played into it.
He put his other hand up before releasing the first, although he didn’t show any interest of going higher than that. “So you have to release your power in one hand in order to move it up. Coordinating all four limbs like that has to be tricky.”
“It is.”
He glanced back at her. “But you were doing it easily.”
“Old exercise from my teacher in Jr. High,” she admitted easily. Back then, she had sucked at it, but, over time, practice had made it easier. “He taught it to us so that we could get better at feeding multiple people power all at once. That, and he said it would be a handy escape route if we ever needed to climb a skyscraper.”
That made him grin. “Like Spiderman?”
“Something like that. My teacher was fast. He could climb a steal beam like it was a ladder.” She still wasn’t that good at it although she improved a little bit each time. “If you came looking for me, did you need me for something?”
“Yup. Trust exercises. I want to try next.”
He’d totally made that up on the spot. Noriko resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Trying to derail Cameron once he got an idea into his head was bound to give her a headache. Fine, if he wanted to try it, she’d let him. It would be a good chance for them to feel their way into their partnership in an unstressed manner. “You need to take your shoes off. I’ll get you a climbing harness.”
He paused with one foot in hand, perfectly balanced like a stork with a leg up. “Climbing harness? You weren’t wearing one.”
She gave him a flat look. “There was no one around to serve as an anchor. It would have been pretty pointless.”
“Well, I don’t need one either. You’ll catch me.”
What? She blinked at him, sure that he had to be pulling her leg. Only he didn’t look like he was joking. “No. No, I won’t.”
“Sure you will. I caught you. That’s how trust exercises work, partner, it’s your turn to catch me.” A glint of impish delight sparked in his eyes although he still kept a straight face on.
“Ha. Haha. You funny, funny man.” Shaking her head, she went for the climbing harness. “How about I catch you as your anchor.”
“I don’t like that method. It’s boring.”
Boring? So he preferred broken bones? Because no matter how hard she tried to catch him, he’d squash her like a bug. “You’ll survive.”
Fortunately for her, the harnesses were already connected to a metal bar up top that could be moved from one area to the next along the climbing wall. It was just long enough to reach the metal beam, although they had the ropes at an angle. Still better than nothing, though if he did fall, he’d go sideways.
Cameron went up one limb at a time, obviously concentrating as he climbed. She watched him carefully, feeding him power in a steady if thin stream. She didn’t know how to read this man. When he was open to her like this, she knew at least what his limits were magically, but trying to go off of his words or body language was challenging at best. It was like he was in code or something. But she wasn’t a cryptographer.
“You’re not talking,” he observed, still focusing straight ahead.
Was she supposed to be? “It takes concentration to do this.”
“Remember, this is harder for you than it is for me. It’s natural for me. I can talk and climb at the same time until I get a good feel for this.”
True, he probably didn’t need to focus as intently. “You’re majoring in Geology too? The captain mentioned it earlier.”
Cameron reached the top and she stood firm as an anchor as he rappelled down. He hit the mats with easy grace, as if he had climbed like this a million times before. Noriko fed him enough line so that he could undo the harness and step out of it before she took it back to the hook and hung it up. Cameron leaned comfortably against the wall, feet crossed at the ankles so he could talk with her. “I am,” he admitted easily. “I think that’s how we both got assigned to California. I’ve barely started the second semester of the courses, though. How far along are you?”
“Started second course last week.”
“Then I’m about two weeks ahead of you.”
Wait, in order for him to do that, he would have had to start roughly the same time that she had. Having their abilities had meant more coursework for them, so it took a year longer to graduate high school, and then another year of intensive training at boot camp before they could even start college. The GF had their own online schooling system, which she had started while at boot camp, but there had been such little spare time that she hadn’t made as much headway as she’d hoped.
It was not unusual for a GF member to be twenty-one and still working on a college degree. Still, she wanted it to be done sooner rather than later. Noriko had been pushing herself to get as much done as she could before getting assigned, figuring that she would lose part of her study time when she started her new job—at least until she got the hang of things. Cameron Powers struck her as many things but driven was not one of them. She gave him a suspicious study from the corner of her eye. “You’re not one of those ‘show once’ people that don’t need to study, are you?”
He gave her a slow, lazy blink. “Naw, I study.”
Uh-huh. And pigs flew, too.
The gym door open and Lars quickly stepped through. Since Cameron’s arrival, they had proven to have very similar personalities. Or at least very similar senses of humor and mischief. Noriko harbored a suspicion they actually were related, somehow.
When Lars saw them, his face fell for some reason. “Aww, is the show over already?”
Noriko gave him a blank look. “Show?”
“Yeah. Some of the guys saw you through the window, climbing one of the beams. I came to take a look.” Finding them standing around chatting instead of hanging off the rafters didn’t faze him for long and he crossed the room with a bounce in his stride. “Were you really climbing a beam?”
“We really were,” Cameron responded. “Spidey, here, was teaching me how to do it.”
“Spidey?” Noriko objected, pointing at her own nose. “I don’t remember agreeing to a nickname.”
“Nicknames aren’t voted on, but freely given,” Cameron informed her mock-seriously. The way his eyes tilted up suggested he was laughing on the inside.
“And you never, ever, escape them,” Lars tacked on, in perfect agreement. “You climb something with your bare hands the first month of a job, you’re going to be labeled ‘Spiderman’ for the rest of your time here. Right, Cam?”
“Right you are, my man. Now, you want to learn how to do it?”
“Sure, but not if you’re teaching me.” Without a beat of hesitation Lars turned to her with an expectant smile. “Well, Spidey? How do I do this?”
Noriko sensed a certain inevitability with that nickname. She would not be able to escape it even if she tried to shoot the two of them right now. And why were they so in sync with each other, anyway? Throwing a hand in the air, she reached for the harness. “Fine. Put this on. How many merlins are you comfortable with?”
“About 5 CMs should do for this, I think,” Lars answered as he slipped his legs into the harness.
“I was using 4,” Cameron offered.
“Then 4.”
Noriko explained the nuts and bolts of it, which Lars tried as she explained, and then he spent a few minutes taking his hands off and on again with his feet firmly planted on the ground until he had the hang of it. He was at least more cautious than Cameron, who had brazenly gone straight up and trusted her anchoring skills. When he had the hang of it he tried going up and only slipped once with his right foot.
Reaching the top, he called down, “Ready?”
“Come on,” she responded, slowly feeding the line as he rappelled back to the ground.
Landing with an expert thump, he turned around with a grin. “That was fun.”
“Isn’t it, though?
” Cameron agreed. “Next time, though, don’t use the harness. It’s more fun as a trust exercise.”
Lars gave him a doubtful look. “With another guy catching me? No thanks. I will say this: Noriko, you’ve got good skill. In the three years I’ve been doing this, I haven’t had such a smooth transfer of power on the first try like that. It took me and Lizzie about a month to get to that level.”
Noriko privately felt that it was more because of Lizzie than anything. Why she didn’t attempt to smooth out the power, or clean it, or do any refining before handing it to Lars was beyond her understanding. Wasn’t that a Mægencræft’s job?
“My Spidey’s got great skills,” Cameron agreed while sliding an arm around her shoulders and beaming like a proud older brother. “And she’s pretty. It’s a lethal combination.”
“Hey, hey, what are you bragging about? My Lizzie is cute too, y’know.”
Noriko glanced between the two of them, knowing very well they were only teasing, and felt torn between laughing and groaning. There was no way for her to take any of what they were saying seriously.
“I understand you went to Edwards already?” Lars didn’t wait for any confirmation before continuing, “That’s good. It’s important to know the whole area. Has anyone taken you up to Red Rock Canyon? No? Maybe we can swing it by the captain as a ‘necessary tour/team building’ thingy.”
“What are the odds we can pull that off?” Cameron asked.
“Pretty decent, actually, Banderas is always up for a good cook-off. Let’s go ask.”
5th Merlin
“Kaa-san,” Noriko groaned into the phone, “do you realize what time it is?”
“Nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, and why aren’t you up, Ri-chan?”
Clearly her mother had not read the email Noriko had sent last night. Noriko gave a dramatic flop back into her bed. “Kaa-san, I have second shift. That means I don’t get home until about 1 a.m.”
Call to Quarters (A Gaeldorcraeft Forces Novel Book 1) Page 5