by M. S. Farzan
“Striker’s down,” I concluded, jerking my head over towards the fallen human, being tended to by Alina. “My friend’s looking after him, but it’s mortal. Can you counterspell?”
Madge pushed herself to her feet, steadying herself on the chair. She peered over my shoulder, then looked at me squarely, shaking her head once.
I cursed, vehemently. I had hoped her photomancy could at least dispel the Destroyer’s magic.
“I’ve stopped his bleeding, but he’s still got two horns sticking out of his chest,” Alina said as she walked up to us. She extended a hand to Madge, introducing herself.
The Daypath took her hand, shaking it firmly. “Nice no-hitter in the sixty-two series.”
“Thanks.”
Madge turned her attention back towards Striker, who was staring back at us from under heavy eyelids. “I can put him in a stasis field…”
Several howls sounded not far from the opening of the cell, announcing the arrival of some newcomers. Whatever we were going to do, we would have to hurry.
“Do it, but quickly. Medical will look after him, but we have to get him there first.”
Madge nodded. “Ceridium?”
I handed her a couple of capsules, and she walked over to Striker.
I pulled out my digitab, enabling the VPen’s security system. The door slid closed with a hiss.
I looked at Tribe, who was still staring into space, his mouth working silently. Gently, I put my hand on his arm, shaking him softly.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, allowing the slightest bit of urgency into my voice. “Time to go.”
His eyes moved vaguely in my direction, focusing briefly and then glazing over again. I shook him a bit more strongly, and he sagged loosely in my grasp.
I set him back against the chair and rummaged through his clothing, finding without difficulty a small packet in one of his jacket’s many pockets. Karthax had seen no need to strip him of his Oxidium, most likely preferring to fuel his addiction. I took one of the little tablets and dropped it on the auric’s tongue, tipping his chin back and pinching his throat to get him to swallow.
The drug took hold within a matter of seconds, and Tribe lurched back into consciousness like a diver coming to the surface. He turned to the side and retched, throwing up the Oxidium and whatever paltry food the NIGHTs had given him. I grabbed a couple of towels from a nearby sink and handed one to him, pressing the other against my bloody face and trying to multitask. In the corner of my lens display, I could see Gloric’s sight of the Embarcadero, his shorter perspective bobbing after Vasshka and Buster up a long pier. They had disembarked and were being pursued, the dwarf running backwards in Gloric’s vision, firing at something behind them two at a time.
Tribe wiped his face fastidiously, shuddering a little as nightmares left his body. He dropped the towel and looked up to face me, a haunted look in his eyes.
“You hurt?” I asked perfunctorily, watching Vasshka guide the gnome and wolf into a waiting party of revolutionaries.
The auric shook his head, surveying the room. He noticed Alina and Madge in the corner, the Daypath casting a long spell, golden light escaping her fingertips and coating Striker’s still form with brilliance.
“Who’re they?” he said in a faraway voice.
“Friends.”
He nodded listlessly, reaching a slender hand up to scratch his tangled hair. Ponderously, he reached into his pocket to pull out another Oxidium tablet, then thought better of it and put it away.
“Gloric,” I said into my microphone, giving Tribe a little time to get his bearings.
The gnome’s voice chimed cheerily in my earpiece. “You guys dead yet?” he panted, still running.
“Not on my watch,” I quipped, pulling up a layout of the NIGHT headquarters on my digitab. “How’s it going over there?”
“Never been better.” The sounds of ceridium weapons and artillery filled the background. “Met up with some of Vasshka’s friends, still trying to keep the heat off of you. The Embarcadero is a warzone!”
“I believe it.” I flicked a finger over the digitab, flipping through the different levels of the facility until I reached the VPen. “Catch any of our conversation here?”
“You getting beat up while Karthax betrays the auric king?” Gloric’s vision spun as he whirled, firing a pair of rockets from his shoulders at the mouth of an alleyway behind them. They each hit an opposing wall, crumbling them to block entry. “I heard it. What’s the plan?”
“I’m trying to figure that out,” I said, enlarging the image of the VPen to look at any alternate elevators. There weren’t any, just a heavily fortified service staircase on the opposite side from the main entrance.
“What’s happening here?” Alina asked as she and Madge walked over. Tribe and the Daypath took a long look at each other, and exchanged nods.
“Karthax and the Destroyer are escaping,” I said, “and we’ve got an army of ragers and at least a handful of agents and security in between us and them.”
“What’s their deal?” Tribe asked distractedly, and I remembered that he hadn’t been privy to the depth of the Inquisitor General’s betrayal or my recap to Madge.
“The war is a setup,” Alina explained, checking the thief for injuries. “Karthax is going to triple-cross the auric king, giving him the city but then poisoning all the underraces with Oxidium.”
The auric perked up at that. “How?”
The Pitcher shrugged. “The water system is my best guess.”
“I can confirm that,” Gloric’s voice rang into our earpieces. I put him and Vasshka on speakerphone so Madge and Tribe could hear him. “The Sigil’s eyes have noticed some revolutionary movement away from the fighting and near the public utilities core. Must be the Destroyer’s people.”
I listened to the gnome, thinking. There was no way we could intercept the revolutionaries loyal to Karthax in time, and without the nonexistent data drive, we would only have my lens recordings as evidence to bring the Inquisitor General to justice. I wasn’t confident that they would be enough.
“So, they’re going to let Thog’run into the city, then kill him,” Madge summed up.
I nodded. “Classic bait-and-switch. They’ll give the auric king his run of San Francisco, and then poison his constituents with Oxidium until they tear themselves apart.”
The Daypath stared at me stoically, but I could see the emotions roiling behind her brown eyes. She had worked for Karthax for a long time, and the betrayal would have hit her the hardest.
“We have to do something,” Tribe announced suddenly, coming out of his reverie.
“We’re doing it,” I said placatingly. “I’ll go after Karthax-”
“No, I mean right now,” he pressed. “Thog’run will ride into the city himself, and there’s no telling what else Karthax might have planned. If the Oxidium doesn’t kill him, something or someone else will.”
A steel shone in Tribe’s eyes, unlike anything I had seen from the normally insouciant auric. Karthax’s betrayal of Thog’run seemed to have bothered him.
“What do you know, Tribe?” I asked gently.
He looked at me intensely, his chest rising and falling slowly. The silence stretched awkwardly as we all watched him, waiting for his reply.
A shadow passed over his face as he searched mine, and his expression changed from defiant, to troubled, and back to his usual easygoing look. He seemed to be considering his words carefully.
“I know him,” he said eventually.
“Since when?” Alina asked.
Tribe shook his head, his stringy hair sticking to his face. “Long time ago, when I first joined the movement. He helped me and my brother, long story. Before all of...”
He swept his hands towards himself. “...this.”
I cleared my throat in the quiet that followed, interested in what the auric had to say but knowing we had precious little time to move. “Would he recognize you?”
“What?” he looke
d confused.
“Thog’run,” I said insistently. “Would he know your face?”
“I...yes,” the thief replied, looking at me like I had three heads. “Yes, he would.”
I gambled. “Gloric,” I spoke into my microphone, “get me the auric king.”
ELEVEN
Thog’run II has taken his throne by force, but this does not indicate that he is unwanted as king. For who permits sovereignty but those who are to be subjects?
-The Sigil of Sparks
The gnome’s vision bobbed as he trailed Doubleshot into a dark building, following the dwarf and her colleagues through a narrow corridor and down into an underground tunnel. It looked as though they were traveling through one of the revs’ many subterraneous networks.
“I’m sorry, what?” Gloric puffed.
“Thog’run,” I said impatiently. “Do you have a direct line to him, or not?”
The sound of shots being fired emanated through the digitab as the group encountered resistance in the tunnel. It seemed that the NIGHTs had anticipated their chosen route.
“Kind of busy here,” the gnome groused for a second time, jumping off a makeshift ladder and into the tunnel. He wheeled to run behind a waiting group of revolutionaries, who were providing cover fire against the waylayers.
“It’s important,” I insisted, looking around at the little party in the VPen. “As in, right now important.”
“Alright, alright, give me a second,” he said, pulling out a keyboard as he ran.
“Can you do a splitscreen? Let him see what I see.”
“Sure, just…” the gnome’s little fingers typed furiously. “Hang on.”
The display whirled as something knocked into Gloric, tumbling him to the side. Buster popped into view as the gnome righted himself, somehow holding onto his keyboard and seeing a ceridium mortar blast the spot in which he had just been standing. The technomancer returned a volley of his own, turning on his heel before seeing if his shot hit its mark.
“Sorry about that,” he said, clicking buttons as he resumed running. A holodisplay emanated from his keyboard, and he tapped through several different interfaces, finally settling on one. “Got it!”
“Thanks,” I remarked, waiting.
It took a couple of beeps, but then I was staring into the face of Thog’run II, King of Aurichome and leader of the revolutionaries, on his private display.
“What is the meaning of this?” he said in a deep, growling voice, his black, beady eyes narrowing at the sight of my face. The auric was on some open-air vehicle of sorts with a phalanx of soldiers on hovering motorcycles visible behind him, subsurface earthen walls racing past them.
“King Thog’run,” I began, “my name is Eskander Aradowsi. Until recently, I have been employed as a Nightpath at the Pacific South NIGHT headquarters-”
“I know who you are,” he snapped. “The agent who has eluded death to spoil the most secret of carefully-laid plans.”
I took his comment as a complement. “Yes, well, those plans may not be turning out the way that you’ve intended.”
The auric stared at me, his piglike nose jerking as though he could smell me through the digitab. His black hair, caught in long topknot, flew behind him as he rode through the underground.
“What have you done?” he said, his tone like that of a father admonishing a wayward child.
“Not me. Karthax,” I explained. “He’s not going to hold up his end of the bargain. You’ll find several of your forces loyal to him preparing to poison the city’s water system with Oxidium. San Francisco will be yours, but it will be full of ragers in no time.”
The auric didn’t miss a beat. “How do you know this, half-human?”
“Karthax told me himself, while he was trying to kill me. Check your people near the public utilities core, and you’ll have more than enough proof. And if you don’t believe me,” I lifted my digitab in front of my face to capture Tribe in my vision, which would display him on Thog’run’s screen. “Ask him.”
Thog’run’s brow furrowed as he took in the sight of the thief sitting in his VPen chair, disheveled and dirty but confident. For his part, Tribe met my gaze as though he was looking into the auric king’s eyes, and his demeanor changed. His posture straightened, and he somehow looked older and more energetic at once.
“Uncle,” he said.
The auric king’s eyes flicked from his screen to the road ahead of him, and back again. I noticed my mouth hanging open and shut it.
“You have spurned your right to call me by that name,” the king said at length, then turned his black eyes on me. “If this is a ransom attempt, you will find no acquiescence here.”
“No, uncle,” Tribe cut off any response I might have had, which was just as well, as I was speechless. “He’s right. Karthax is going to poison the water supply as soon as you take the city. He’s had me in the VPen trying to get information out of me, until the Nightpath came.”
The auric king’s scowl softened for a moment, and his screen froze as he presumably checked our information. I looked up at Alina, whose eyes were as big as saucers.
Double-U Tee Eff, she mouthed at me.
I raised my hands, shrugging incredulously.
Thog’run’s screen unfroze after a moment, and he looked even more dour, if it were possible.
“Your information is correct, Nightpath Aradowsi. We will have the traitors neutralized momentarily. And you, disobedient one,” his eyes flicked to the part of his screen displaying my vision. I looked at Tribe, who met my gaze steadily.
“Return to Aurichome when this is over. I would have a word with you.”
The digitab clicked as the king disconnected the call. The room collectively exhaled, most of us having forgotten to breathe. I eyed Tribe suspiciously, voicing the question on everyone’s minds.
“Uncle?”
He wriggled nervously under my gaze. “He took me and my brother in when we first joined the revs. We were kids, and Aurichome was still a warzone. I got mixed up with the wrong crowd, started selling Oxidium, then doing it. He kicked me out. That was fifteen years ago.”
“Wow. Didn’t see that one coming,” Vasshka’s voice came through the digitab.
I vacillated, knowing that we needed to get moving but intrigued by the turn of events. None of my records had given any indication of Tribe’s familial connection to the auric king, but I wasn’t Karthax or the Sigil.
Madge, who had impassively watched the exchange, caught my eye. “Interesting friends you’ve made this week,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“You’re telling me.”
I brought the image of the VPen back up on my digitab, displaying it to the others. “We need to get out of here,” I said, changing the subject. “If Thog’run’s taking care of the utilities core, we can focus on intercepting Karthax and the Destroyer before they escape, and getting Striker to medical.”
“We’ll focus on not dying,” Gloric said.
“Great.”
“What about the ragers?” Alina asked.
I pursed my lips, thinking. “We could fight our way through, but we don’t have the time.” I turned to Madge. “Where would Karthax go?”
The Daypath responded without hesitation. “If he’s hurt, they will have teleported to his sanctum to patch themselves up. If they know that Thog’run is in on their betrayal, they’ll be getting to his airpad a-sap.”
I nodded, bringing up the layout of the NIGHT facility to show it to the group. Karthax’s sanctum and airpad were in the northern spire, requiring us to retrace our steps to the atrium and across to a separate set of elevators. Medical was south, also requiring entry into the central foyer. Alina, Madge and I might have been able to make it without arousing suspicion, but not in our bloodied state. Having Tribe and a sparkle-encrusted, comatose Striker wouldn’t help.
Inspiration struck as I looked at the facility layout. “We can use the ragers as a distraction,” I said.
“How
so?” Tribe asked, still sitting in his chair.
“We can draw as many of them as we can into the maintenance stairwell and set them loose in the atrium,” I explained, tracing my finger on the map. “Whatever agents are left will have their hands full. The rest of you can use the elevator to get up to medical.”
“Rest of you? Where are you going?” Alina said.
I made an appealing gesture with my hands. “Someone has to persuade the ragers.”
The Pitcher looked at me incredulously, clearly thinking me insane. Even Tribe gave me an appraising look, letting out a low whistle. He seemed to slowly be getting back to his normal self.
“I’m the only shadowmancer here,” I put forward. “Tribe is in no condition to fight, and Madge will need to be present to transport Striker with the stasis field.”
“I could come with you,” Alina offered.
I shook my head. “I can’t hide you.”
She nodded, understanding, but not liking it.
Madge put her hand on my shoulder, her grip firm. “Let us know when.”
We prepared ourselves for battle, and I gave Alina directions on how to use her digitab’s stolen profile to work the elevator’s security system. I crushed a ceridium capsule and enveloped myself in a shadow shroud, standing by the door.
I looked back at the little party, who gazed vaguely in my direction. Tribe was busy flushing his Oxidium down the toilet, and Madge was using her stasis spell to lift Striker off of the floor. Alina stood quietly, fidgeting with her ceridium sphere and looking small.
“Buy you a beer when this is all over,” I said to her, my heart in my throat.
She smiled, and it was the most brilliant thing I had ever seen, eclipsing the light coming off of Madge’s spell. The expression reminded me of how fragile they were, and what easy targets they would make. I would have to draw as many ragers away from them as I could.
I clicked a button on my digitab, and disappeared through the doorway, shutting it again behind me.
The VPen was cold and oppressive as before, but wild noises punctured the air, echoing across the cavern’s walls. The ragers were conscious and looking for a way out, howling, snarling, tearing at the stone and concrete. I shuddered, thinking about what they might have done to the VPen inhabitants they had already found.