by Jamie Davis
“I won’t. Thanks again for the chips. I owe you one.”
“Yes, you do.” Jonesey bent back down over the circuit boards as she picked up the soldering gun again. Puffing away on her cigarette. Amidst the clouds of smoke, she went back to work on whatever it was she been doing when he arrived.
Kurt took the hint and turned around, headed back outside. He had the chips that Cappo asked for.
He planned on heading home to lock up the chips if he got them. Now Kurt figured he needed to check in on Marci in person. Somebody needed to figure out why she wasn’t returning calls.
Kurt climbed into his SUV, leaning over to put the bag of chips in the special armored lockbox he kept under the front passenger seat. He pressed his thumb on the locking seal until he heard a click and then sat back up. The chips would be safe in there for now.
He started the electric motor and headed out into traffic. It was time to drive towards Marci’s condo apartment next to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. What had been a nagging worry was a full blown concern now.
Chapter 4
On his way across town, Kurt tried to reach Marci again via his comm chip. He tried three times but could not connect with her.
While there have been times since they started working together when he had not been in contact with Marci for a few days, he’d always known where she was. There had not been a time when she did not respond back to his calls or messages. This and failing to talk to either her father or Jonesey caused him concern.
He pulled up to the condo building where she lived and parked in a visitor spot out front. You couldn’t get into the owner’s garage without a key card. He walked up to the front doors and tapped her apartment number on the intercom keypad and waited for her to answer. After several tries, he realized she wasn’t going to answer, or she wasn’t home at all.
Kurt walked around the side of the building where he could see through the grate into the underground parking garage. He knew where Marci’s parking spot was and wanted to check and see if her car was there.
Sure enough, when he bent down to peer into the darkened garage, he spotted her black sedan parked in the usual spot. If she wasn’t home, she’d gone out somewhere close enough to walk or rode with someone else. He decided he needed to get inside and find out if she was here or not.
Walking back around to the front of the building, he spotted a woman coming out the front door. She turned and walked away with her back to him.
As she started down the street, Kurt raced to catch the door before it locked again. He slipped his hand between the door and the jam just before it clicked closed.
Slipping inside, Kurt walked over to the elevator and pressed the button to head up. He arrived on the tenth floor and walked down the hallway until he stood outside Marci’s apartment. There was no sign of forced entry or damage that he could see. The door was locked.
He knocked on the door several times and waited for her to respond. After waiting for a few minutes, Kurt gave up. He had to get inside and see if there was a clue to her whereabouts.
Kurt knew Marci had substantial security measures she could put in place. Besides the usual mechanical and electronic security systems, he knew she was also an accomplished mage. If he were her, he’d almost assuredly have magical protections in place as well.
Tuning his vision to the magical spectrum, Kurt scanned the doorway. He couldn’t see anything radiating an aura. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a spell in place though. Kurt didn’t possess the raw power Marci did. He also didn’t have her understanding of quantum physics and gateway theory. He did, however, have significant training received during his time as a member of an army special ops team.
Recalling one of the spells he’d first learned to use when breaching a doorway, Kurt cast a dispelling field on the area around the door itself. He set it so the magic penetrated through the walls and encompassed the entire door, the door frame, and the areas both inside and outside the door for about a half meter in each direction.
It took nearly a minute to finish the casting. He was glad no one came out of their apartment to see him. They would think something was suspicious about a man casting a spell in the hallway like that.
Once his dispelling field was in place, Kurt was pretty confident he’d disabled anything approaching a standard ward or warning spell. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his small pouch of dental tools and worked on the mechanical deadbolt lock.
The small stainless steel dental tools were the best option for picking locks as far as he was concerned. Marci had a high quality lock installed with the capability of remote access and other electronic bells and whistles. It was still a mechanical lock when all was said and done. It didn’t take him more than 30 seconds to open it.
Kurt stood up and reached down to turn the doorknob. No spell fired that he could sense. He kept his guard up but moved forward, stepping into the apartment.
The flashing red light on the security panel across the room caught his attention. Kurt knew it was there. He didn’t worry about it until he had entered the room. It only allowed thirty seconds to enter the correct key sequence before it alerted the building’s security service. Unfortunately, he had no idea what Marci’s passcode was.
Calling on his army training once again, Kurt cast a small time dilution spell on the keypad itself. He had to work fast. Time was ticking down on the display.
The spell caused a small, localized pocket of time that moved slower than normal. It would seem as if 30 seconds had passed inside the bubble, but outside in normal time, Kurt had just about an hour with which to search the apartment and figure out where Marci was. That should be plenty of time.
With the security measures taken care of, Kurt looked around Marci’s condo. It was then he heard the murmuring of a voice somewhere nearby. It might be Marci, but there was something strange about it.
Stepping across the room, Kurt opened the bedroom door. Inside he found Marci seated on the floor next to her bed dressed in a nightshirt. She was pale and sweating, rocking back and forth, holding the strange translucent crystal they’d recovered back in Rendara during a mission. She clutched it to her chest.
“Marci, what’s wrong?” Kurt asked, bending down to bring his face to her level.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even look up to acknowledge he’d spoken. Kurt moved forward and reached out to touch her shoulder. As soon as his hand contacted her, she jerked her head up. She stared into his eyes and said in a strained and hoarse voice, “Get the hell away from me. You can’t have it.”
“Marci, it’s me, Kurt. What’s going on? I don’t want the crystal. I came because I was worried about you.”
She didn’t answer. Her head tilted back down and she continued rocking back and forth staring straight ahead, muttering something under her breath.
Kurt didn’t know what to do. He’d never seen her like this before. The crystal must be having some magical effect on her. That was the only thing he could come up with.
He activated his comm chip and tapped his wrist comp to bring up his addresses and phone numbers. Tapping on one he connected a call.
“This is Jonesey. You better have a good reason for calling me after you were just here, Kurt.”
“I do, believe me. I need you to get over here to Marci’s place right away.”
“I’m busy, Kurt, connect her to the call if she needs me to help her with something. I’ve got this project to finish up.”
“She can’t join the call, Jonesey. She’s catatonic or nearly so. Something’s wrong. She’s just sitting in the middle of her bedroom clutching that damned crystal and telling me to get away and that I can’t have it.”
Kurt tapped a key on his wrist comp and sent video from the bedroom to Jonesey over the comm connection.
After a few seconds, the elf asked, “How long’s she been that way?”
“I don’t know, Jonesey. Nobody’s heard from her for at least three days. That was the last time her fath
er said he talked to her. I haven’t talked with her for a couple of weeks.”
“Look,” Jonesey said. ”This might be something pretty serious. There’s something about that crystal that seems oddly familiar but I can’t tell for sure from here. I’m coming over right away. Stay with her and don’t let her leave the apartment, no matter what.”
“I don’t think she’s going anywhere. It looks like she’s been sitting in the same spot for days.”
“Just do as I say. While you’re waiting for me to get there, you can also check around the apartment. See if you can find any sign of someone casting a hex on her or some other curse. It might be someone else trying to get to her or maybe the crystal. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Jonesey disconnected the call and Kurt turned and scanned the room, he shifted his vision through all the spectrums he could access with his magic. It was limited compared to what Marci or Jonesey could do but he couldn’t see any signs of magical activity.
Kurt returned to the bedroom and studied Marci, leaning over and getting as close as he could without touching her. He tried to see if he could spot any signs of foul play. There might be a place where someone injected her with some sort of drug. Sometimes insects could plant a hex with a bite. He saw nothing on the bare skin in view.
Turning around, Kurt set to searching Marci’s bedroom and the rest of her apartment. In the living room, he discovered the ornate chest sitting in front of the sofa. It was unlocked and the latch was open. Every other time he’d been here it had been locked tight.
Lifting the lid, Kurt was surprised to see a small circular portal in the chest’s bottom leading down to an opening below. Why had Marci never told him about a gateway here in her condo?
Kurt glanced at his wrist comp, checking the time. Jonesey was still five minutes away. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small penlight. Holding on with one hand so he didn’t fall through, Kurt leaned down into the chest and stuck his head through the portal. He shined his flashlight around to see what was through the gateway. He spotted the small ovoid room and realized this wasn’t a naturally occurring gate. This must be something Marci had created with her own magic.
Kurt marveled once again at her amazing ability to open and transit gateways using her knowledge of magic and theoretical physics. He’d have to find out if she could install one of these things at his place, too. It would be the ultimate safe room.
The buzzer sounded from over near the front door. Kurt walked over and pressed the intercom button with his finger. A holographic display popped up on the wall above the intercom showing Jonesey standing outside the entrance downstairs.
“Come on up. I’m buzzing you in now.”
Kurt pressed the button on the panel, opening the front doors of the condo building to let Jonesey in. He watched her enter and then switched off the intercom. The holographic display disappeared leaving a plain white wall in its place.
Now that Jonesey was here, maybe the two of them could figure out what had happened to Marci. He turned and watched her rock back and forth on the floor of her bedroom while he waited for the elf.
Chapter 5
A few minutes later the door opened and the Elven tech mage walked in. She looked around the living room and then at Kurt. “Where is she?”
“She’s in the bedroom. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Kurt led Jonesey into the bedroom. Marci remained on the floor, clutching the crystal to her chest. She still rocked back and forth. Now and then, she muttered something unintelligible under her breath.
Jonesey stopped in the doorway and pointed at Marci. “No one told me she’d found a Chaos Crystal.” She turned to look at Kurt. She seemed angry. “Why didn’t anyone tell me she found a Chaos Crystal?”
“I didn’t know she’d found one. I don’t even know what a Chaos Crystal is.”
“When she told me she’d found something on another world, I just assumed it was a piece of a meteorite or space junk coming from a planet or dimension with a strong magical capability. This,” Jonesey said, gesturing at the crystal in Marci’s arms, “This is something else entirely.”
“She recovered it on a job a little over a month ago. It was being used by some sort of demon who’d traveled to that world and used the crystal to amplify a pretty strong mind control spell. It concealed his identity and altered the memories of every living person within a hundred fifty kilometers of the crystal’s location.”
“A Chaos Crystal possesses enough power to do that. It can do a lot more, too, in the right hands.”
Kurt looked at Marci. “So, it’s the crystal that’s doing this to her?”
Jonesey shook her head. “No, the crystal should be aligned to her by now if she’s had it that long. If anything, the crystal’s protecting her from something else that’s doing this. My guess is it’s shielding her from an external spell or attack.”
“Like what?” Kurt didn’t like seeing his partner like this and wanted whatever it was to stop. “If it’s not the crystal what else could it be.”
“If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say someone is trying to exert some sort of control over her from a distance.”
“How can you be sure?” Kurt asked. “I didn’t see anyone suspicious around when I got here. Do you think there’s someone outside the building somewhere doing this to her?”
“I’ll know more once I get a good scan of her and of the apartment.”
A beeping sound distracted Kurt. Then he realized what it was. “Damn, I deactivated her security system with a temporal dilution spell. It’s worn off and her security alarm is about to go off. A few armed guards are going to show up soon if we don’t do something.”
Jonesey swore and got up from where she crouched by Marci. She walked out into the living room and crossed to the panel with the security system keypad. Reaching into the backpack she carried with her, Jonesey pulled out a piece of two centimeter thick clear acrylic. At least, that’s what it looked like. It was rectangular and a little larger than the keypad for the security system.
“What’s that?” Kurt asked.
“It’s a DNA sensing time-shifting glass. It should be able to look at the keypad and go back in time until it senses the last time someone entered the code. It’ll give us the correct digits to enter and cancel the alarm.”
“I need to get myself one of those,” Kurt said.
“This is the only one in the world like it and I’m not selling it.”
“That’s all right, Jonesey, just fix this. We’re no help to Marci if we can’t get the security system turned off.”
The elf held the rectangular block up over the keypad. As soon as she did, the image of the keypad showed up magnified in the clear glass and flickered. It continued flickering for about ten seconds. Then, a hand appeared in the image and tapped in a sequence of numbers. The hand disappeared from view and the image stabilized. Six numbers appeared at the top of the rectangular block.
Jonesey pulled the block of glass away from the panel and entered the six numbers showing on the front into the keypad. There was a double chirp from the system. The security alarm canceled and the system reset to safe mode.
Jonesey returned the glass block to her backpack and then went back into the bedroom where Marci sat. She hadn’t moved since they left her a few minutes before. Jonesey pulled out a pair of what looked like a welder’s goggles. Slipping them on, she pulled them down over her eyes. Her head moved back and forth in a slow steady motion as she scanned the room beginning with Marci and the area directly around her
“There’s definitely some sort of spell working on her right now. I can see the magical flows reaching out to her. They are unlike anything I’ve seen before.”
Kurt shook his head. That wasn’t good. He figured Jonesey had seen everything. She had to be at least several centuries old.
“What does it look like?” Kurt asked.
“The tendrils are dark and have a certain taint to them that almost seems a
s if it is being filtered somehow, as if they were passing through a prism.”
“A prism? I’ve seen an effect like that when I saw someone try to cast a spell from one side of a gateway into the other side. It didn’t end well for the spell caster. After seeing that, I pretty much figured it was impossible to do that kind of magic safely.”
Jonesey shook her head. “It’s not impossible, just pretty damned difficult. It would take someone with a lot of power and magical control to pull it off. I think you’re right, though. Whoever is doing this to Marci is casting the spell from the other side of a portal, and it must be one that’s not too far from here.”
“How far is not too far?” Kurt asked. ”There are only a few portals within a kilometer or so of here that I know of. All are monitored by federal agents. I don’t think someone would take a chance to cast their spell with those types of scanners and mages around to detect it. I suppose there might be a secret one around somewhere.”
“My guess would be that it’s only half a kilometer away from here, probably less. We can worry about finding the gate later though.” Jonesey dug in her bag again. “For now we need to separate her from the spell. The crystal has protected her from falling completely under its control, but she’s basically stuck where she is while the crystal fights with whoever is trying to control her.”
Jonesey kept digging in her bag and then smiled. She stood up as she pulled out a folded up piece of white lace. Jonesey laid the lace out on the floor and carefully unfolded it. As she did, Kurt noticed the fabric of the lace sparkled in the light. He realized it wasn’t constructed of normal thread. There was a magical quality to it.
“What’s that made of?”
“My mother crocheted this for me years ago. It’s formed from threads woven together from pure silver spun with spider silk. It has unique properties. One of them is to create a barrier between whatever it covers and any spells. It’s fragile, though. We’ll have to be careful. If I damage it, my mother will be super pissed.”