by Shaun Barger
With a gasp, Nikolai looked at his hand. And for a moment he thought that everything with Jubal in the room had been some sort of terrible dream. But then he saw it glimmering in the light, and looking closer saw that his skin ended at the wrist. Beyond that was the golden hand that’d been sitting on the medical tray.
Nikolai stared at it, clenching and unclenching with wonder. As his awareness returned, so did the pain—the cuts and bruises across his body, the aching muscles, the thudding pain in his skull—but most of all the burning throb of his hand, his fingers. Though he could feel the surface of the golden hand like real skin—could move it as fluidly and easily as the one it had replaced—he could still feel the agony of his flesh turning to ash.
Jubal stepped out of the shadows beyond his cell. Eyes heavy with that terrible sadness.
“The pain will fade,” he said. “The nerves, muscle memory, and unique magical channels of your original hand have all been replicated perfectly within the prosthetic. It’ll track every spell you cast. Every place you go.”
Nikolai didn’t say anything. He just stared at him. Silent. Hateful.
“You’re going to have to work hard to redeem yourself. Work hard to prove yourself in the eyes of the king. I’m leaving you here for the next a week or so. After that you’ll be back in your old room and we’ll resume your training—under my tutelage, this time. I’ll be keeping you busy, keeping a close eye on you. But . . . if you prove yourself trustworthy . . .”
Nikolai turned his head to look away from him, into the darkness.
“Nik,” he said softly. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
He stood there in silence for a little while. Waiting for Nikolai to say something, maybe. Finally, Nikolai heard the clicking of Jubal’s footsteps as he walked away.
He closed his eyes. The stone was cold and dug into his back, uncomfortable. There was a toilet in the corner, next to a small sink. Feeling like he was two hundred years old, Nikolai staggered over to the sink to drink from the dusty faucet.
“The price is paid,” Jubal had said. Nikolai looked at his hand. His golden hand. So strange. Master enchanters had perfected prosthetics long ago—Nikolai knew that before long the pain would fade as his brain adjusted. Soon he wouldn’t even notice the difference. It wasn’t exactly gold—the skin had give to it. Not quite as supple and soft as actual skin, but a close approximation.
His Focals sat a little ways outside of the cell. He could feel them before he saw them. Baton. Dagger. Sitting in their holsters in his belt, coiled at the bottom of a wooden bucket.
Nikolai didn’t even have to test the bars to know that his weaves would melt passing through them. Standard cell enchantments—same as what they had back at Marblewood Watchman HQ. Impossible to unravel, even for an arch magus. No way to get to his Focals.
He folded the blanket on the floor and lay down, staring at the ceiling—golden hand held up in the light. He moved the fingers, watching them glitter.
The war outside the Veils. It was beyond Nikolai. Things might be bad for the humans, but . . . Nikolai’s intervention had done nothing but harm. Nothing but ruined the lives of . . . thousands. Disc.
He felt himself slipping into a warm, comfortable calm. A tentative sense of relief. He’d still be a member of the Edge Guard. The price was paid. Nikolai’s punishment had been harsh, but the worst of it was over. Jubal obviously hadn’t wanted to do it—he obviously felt bad about what he’d done to Nikolai. The Mage King had probably ordered him to do it. And he’d get to see everyone again. Have another chance to get things right—to fix things with his friends. To live.
And maybe, one day, when Nikolai had earned his way up the ranks, he could push for action. Could try to convince the Mage King to step in. Once he’d proven himself trustworthy, and as the most capable Edge Guard on the force. How many other sergeant-rank Edge Guards could have ventured beyond the Veil and lived to tell about it?
Of course the Mage King didn’t want to help the humans yet. There were so few magi. And even fewer still that knew how to fight. How could they possibly hope to stand against the Synth? He’d been naive. So completely—
A rumbling, animal growl made Nikolai yelp with surprise.
Sitting beyond the bars was an immense black wolf, staring at Nikolai with angry, pale green eyes.
It snarled, snapping monstrous fangs as its dark-furred hackles rose and flexed.
Nikolai scrambled back, pushing himself up against the wall as far as he could get from it, terrified as it growled, furious at him, enraged, and—
Nikolai blinked.
The wolf was gone.
He gasped, panting. Was he hallucinating? Had he totally lost it? Snapped? But no—no way had the wolf been a hallucination. No way had he imagined it. He sat there, catching his breath. The wolf . . . it was so familiar. But where had he . . . ?
Nikolai remembered what Jubal had said about the original Discs communicating with visions and dreams. Was that what this was? Had the beast been a messenger? It seemed crazy, but the wolf had been here. Somehow Nikolai knew that he’d really seen it. Impossible, but—he didn’t feel crazy. No; he felt a strange clarity.
But there was something more than that. Something Nikolai was missing. Something important, that he should have noticed by now, but couldn’t quite . . .
And then it hit him. There. When he focused hard—when he cleared his head and pushed away the pain, the aches. A small tickling. A sort of tug. An itch. From two directions at once.
Jem’s tracer.
But why was it . . .
“No,” he breathed, standing. “Oh Disc, please no . . .”
Two directions. One far, one close. One above, one lateral.
She was there—tracer still intact, so weak, so distant that he almost missed it entirely. But without a doubt, it was her, and he could feel it tugging—one tug through the portal in Jubal’s office, somewhere above him, and in the distance, across the city, at Jubal’s home.
Nikolai roared and slammed himself against the bars.
“Captain! CAPTAIN! You Foxbourne WRETCH! You evil, filthy Jeeves traitor MOTHERFUCKER! What have you done to her? What have you—”
He tried everything, every weave, every spell. Tried to dig through the stone. Tried to channel the water through the cracks, to use it like a tentacle, to pull his Focals close enough to somehow use.
It was no use.
Jem’s tracer weave like a beacon—a plea. Why would Jubal lie to Nikolai? But no—that was stupid. Why wouldn’t he lie to him? The real question was what did he want with her? What was he doing to her?
But no one came. No one replied to his shouts.
Until . . .
“Albert, I swear, this better not be some elaborate ruse to get into my pants. Because it’s just not happening, kid.”
“Oh, for the love of!” Albert’s voice echoed through the halls from out of sight, exasperated. “A little benefit of the doubt, please. Have you considered the possibility that not every creature on this great green planet would come crawling through rain and fire for the merest peek of you in some state of undress? And besides, I happen to be seeing a perfectly dashing young gentleman at the—”
They stopped, gasping as they turned the corner, a globe of illio bobbing in front of them.
Ilyana ran over to Nik’s cell, eyes wide with shock.
“Nik! Oh, Nik!” she said. “Albert said you were here, said he could sense you through that tracer he put in your shoe! That you must have forgotten to take it off!”
Dazed, Nikolai looked down at his sneakers, crusted with dirt, ashes, and blood. The tracer. The goddamn tracer. He’d totally forgotten about it.
For a moment Nikolai wondered if they were actually there, or if they were phantoms, like the wolf; his mind playing a terribly cruel joke. Here for a moment, then gone in a flash.
He blinked.
But when he opened his eyes, Albert and Ilyana were kneeling before the bars, Ilyana looking horrif
ied, Albert stiff with indignant fury.
“I sensed your arrival last night,” Albert said. “Spoke with the captain this morning, asked after your well-being. He told me that you were still in Marblewood. Lied to my face, without so much as a twinge. I searched the headquarters, trying to close in on your tracer, but I simply could not find you. Just as I was about to give up I recalled an obscure passage in one of our older procedural manuals mentioning a derelict brig, and thought that maybe, just maybe . . .”
He looked at Ilyana, then back at Nikolai. “Turns out our rank was sufficient to gain access to the brig, so I confirmed that Jubal would be away for the next several hours to meet with the Mage King and fetched Ilyana to join me in my search. Disc, man, what’s happened? You’re filthy, and the stink of you! Jeeves! Is that blood? What in Styx have you done to elicit such savagery?”
“I went outside the Veil. Outside of Marblewood,” Nikolai explained. “And—there were people. Humans! Everything we’ve been told, it’s a lie. And people, they’re dying—they’re being killed off. It’s been a century; they’re so advanced now, but there’s a war, a war with—with robots. Artificial intelligences. There was a human with me—a girl. She saved me, I’d have died without her, wouldn’t ever have made it home. Jubal—he said he took her to a human city in Rojava, but he lied, just like he lied to you, Albert! He’s got her at his mansion, and I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid something bad is happening to her.”
They stood there in stunned silence, staring at Nikolai like he’d completely lost his mind.
“Nik . . . chap . . .” Albert said, gingerly. “This all sounds a bit . . . far-fetched.”
“Captain Jubal wouldn’t do something like that,” Ilyana insisted. “And . . . machines? Artificial whoziwhatsits?”
“Your precious captain burned off my fucking HAND!” Nikolai snarled through tears, slamming the palm of the golden replacement against the bars for them to see. “As punishment. As a lesson for leaving the Veil—for daring to suggest that we intervene. Daring to suggest that the civilian population should know the truth—that they should be the ones to decide whether or not we help them. But by hiding the truth—by standing by and just letting the humans die—it’s GENOCIDE!”
Ilyana stared at Nikolai’s golden hand, eyes wide.
“No,” she said, just above a whisper, looking down at her own hand with a strange expression. “I don’t believe you. He’s different. The captain . . . he wouldn’t do that.”
She began to snake a slender rope of fire through the fingers of her glove. Faster. Faster. Then she bared her teeth in a snarl and violently clenched her fingers into a fist around the flames, crushing it out.
“Do you have any evidence?” Albert asked shakily. “Anything besides your current state? Your word?”
“In my room,” Nikolai said. “Room two-thirteen. I hid a special rank insignia under the floorboard beside my bed. A Moonwatch medallion.”
“Disc, man!” Albert exclaimed. “How did you get your hands on one of those?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’ll get me out of here. It’ll get us up to Jubal’s office—we can get to his house from there. We’ll get Jem. Then I’ll open up a door in the Veil and show you what’s outside.”
“Okay,” Ilyana said, struggling to calm herself. “Okay, okay, okay, let’s get it. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Nikolai said as they turned to leave, golden hand outstretched through the bars. “Please, please don’t leave me alone here. Please!”
Ilyana went back in a rush to kneel beside the cell, taking Nikolai’s hands through the bars and holding them tightly.
“Albert,” she said. “Go on without me. I’m going to stay.”
Albert started to argue, but at her sharp look he shut his mouth and nodded.
“I missed you,” Nikolai said, trembling. “I really, really missed you.”
She smiled, blinking back tears. “I’m sorry I never picked up when you called. I . . . I just . . .”
“I just. You just. We just,” Nikolai said, his smile bittersweet as he echoed her words from what felt like an eternity ago. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t think I’d ever get to see you again, I thought I was going to die, and the way we left things, I thought—”
“Shush, I’m here now, it’s okay.” She turned over his golden hand, touched the wrist, looking pained. “Oh. Oh, what did they do to you?” She kissed the line on his wrist where the gold met flesh, as if to heal the wound, then kissed his other hand and looked up at him, forcing a smile even though her eyes were red. “I mean, gold? It’s so tacky.”
Nikolai laughed despite it all, and tried to talk, but he knew if he started talking he’d start crying, so he just smiled and held her hands and stared into her eyes while she stroked his wrist and made soothing noises.
“I’m sorry, I’m so bad at this,” he finally managed.
“We are a mess,” she agreed.
Albert had no trouble finding the Moonwatch medallion, though he was sweating and flustered when he returned. After Nikolai was freed, they stood outside the dusty elevator door of the otherwise abandoned brig, basked in the dull orange light of an ancient glow bulb.
“Just take two for now,” Ilyana instructed as she tapped out a pair of rubbery little beads from her flask and pressed them into Nikolai’s golden palm.
“What are they?” he asked, eyeing the beads—watching the strange, pearly light pulse from within, a soft glow through the oily blue shells.
“Flex,” she explained. “Titan’s Tears. Sweat of Karna. Sharpens senses. Quickens reflexes. Numbs pain. I use it to train when I’m hungover or on my period.”
Albert sniffed, giving her a look of disapproval. “No wonder you defeat me so often at sparring. You’re a damned cheater.”
She cast him a look of disdain. “This isn’t flyball, Albert. We’re not professional athletes. Besides, I don’t require magical enhancement to thrash you.”
Nikolai popped the beads into his mouth. They instantly dissolved on his tongue, tasting like peppermint and rosemary.
“Be careful,” Ilyana said, filling his palm with more of the beads. “You can’t exactly overdose on them, but . . . it’s borrowing from the future. The higher the dose, the worse you’ll be later on. And you’re already in rough shape. Not to mention the side effects.”
“I’ll be careful,” Nikolai said, pouring the beads into his pocket. “Thanks, Ilyana. Let’s go.”
He pressed the Moonwatch insignia against the dusty elevator door.
“Captain Jubal’s office.”
The light over the elevator flashed red in denial of his request, and there was an odd metallic groan as the override went into effect. The light changed to green, and the elevator followed their command.
It was dark in Jubal’s office.
Nikolai felt oddly calm as the Titan’s Tears seeped through his body and filled him with a gentle euphoria. His surroundings seemed sluggish, slowed down. It was as if he could see past his peripheral vision—more than seeing, he could feel his surroundings. Was this how Jem experienced the world with her mod enhancements?
Lights and colors seemed brighter, richer. He felt strong—like he could run twenty miles without breaking a sweat. Like he could snap somebody’s neck with his bare hands.
The folded space door to Jubal’s garden was closed but not locked. Nikolai pulled it open and was temporarily blinded by the sun. It stood high in the artificial sky—late morning.
Albert whistled as they passed through the ringed gardens towards Jubal’s home at the center. “A tad decadent,” he said. “But quite nice.”
Nikolai led the way as they entered the mansion within the gardens. As he followed the gentle tugging of Jem’s tracer, he could feel his heart rate increasing—oddly detached through the sharply pleasant warmth of Ilyana’s drugs—though fear and certainty etched away at his calm as he led them into the library, to the hidden stairwell.
Albert let out a sharp gasp.
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Ilyana and Nikolai spun, drawing their Focals, only to find Albert gawking at the bookcases—at the collection of rarities protected under enchanted glass.
“DISC! The Binding of Thanatos? I didn’t think that there were any copies of this still intact. In such perfect condition! Styx! Oh Styx, and this! An original print of The Book of Bei Ze? Jeeves—Disc! Just look at the illuminations! It’s spectacular, simply spectacular—”
“Not the fucking time, Albert,” Nikolai snapped.
Albert sighed, pulling himself away from the display cases.
They descended into the darkness of the basement, following the tracer’s pull through the theater, into the white-walled showroom.
Albert kept making quiet noises of awe as he admired Jubal’s secret collection of art, tech, and magi-tech. It seemed to be requiring a great deal of effort for him to contain his enthusiasm.
“He brought me here once,” Ilyana said. “Had me try some of that awful bourbon.”
“Am I the only one who hasn’t been invited to Captain Jubal’s secret clubhouse?” Albert muttered, following Nikolai into the gun range through the heavy glass and steel door.
Ilyana looked around at the weaponry, her eyes settling on his mother’s rune-etched revolver spinning in the translucent bubble. “He didn’t bring me in here. Told me it was just a storage room. I can see why now.”
“So strange,” Nikolai muttered, walking across the cement room, forcing himself not to look at the revolver as he went past it. To his left were the two long shooting lanes—but this side of the room was empty—nothing but blank walls. No decoration, no furniture. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but now . . .
Albert was glancing over the shelves of ammo, peeking into the blank white boxes. “My cousin has a collection of old human weaponry like this. Had to go through all sorts of hoops and bureaucracy. Hardly worth the effort.” He went over to the gun rack, reaching to touch one of the shotguns. He let out a hiss, pulling his hand away and popping his finger into his mouth. “Ouch! Damned burn field.”