She balled her right hand into a fist, making stabbing knives move up and down her whole arm. Focused on one thought - staying alive - she summoned whatever magic was left in her to her hand. A Stunbomb coalesced and took shape in her palm. Weak in intensity, she couldn’t afford to wait. She threw the tiny ball of orange light behind her, shattering the orb into the troll’s face. Instead of a concussive wave, it only gave off a burst of blinding light. The troll cried out, releasing Cora as both of his hands grabbed for his eyes.
Cora hit the ground on both feet. Her left hand caught her sheath and steadied it, her right drew out the blade. She spun, spotted the opening as the troll clutched his eyes, and stabbed upwards. The curved blade pierced beneath his chin and continued on without resistance until it struck the top of his skull. As quickly as she struck, she withdrew the blade. A torrent of blood followed behind it. The troll’s muscles locked, freezing his hands in position around his eyes. He dropped to his knees, then fell flat on his stomach.
The taste of copper filled Cora’s mouth. She sucked and gathered it all to the front of her tongue and spit blood and more fragments of her tooth to the ground. Her left eye squinted and tingled, already swelling. The left side of her cheek stretched and swelled as if she tucked half an apple in there. Her throat ached, she didn’t dare try to swallow even if she wanted to. On shaking legs, she stumbled past the troll’s corpse and picked up her Preshnekov and dagger. As she ascended the metal stairs a second time, she looked to her side for her Predator. She deemed that a lost cause and tried the door, rifle at the ready. No biometrics, not even a manual lock. The knob turned and the door opened.
Ahead, white tiles reflected the fluorescent lights above, blinding Cora. She shut her eyes and shook it off. With that much light sensitivity, there was probably a concussion going on, in addition to everything else. Her body would have to wait to die, though. For everyone that was killed for the secret of this place, she wasn’t leaving until she knew what it was. She crossed the threshold and down the hall, into the heart of Project Phoenix.
Project Phoenix
Droplets of crimson fell from Cora’s fingertips onto the pristine white tile. Her rifle moved with her eyes as she stalked through the corridor. A door on either side marked the end of the hall, leading to paths left and right. The door on the right was marked as a janitor’s closet. On the left, the knob turned without any special locks and opened to a break room. Vending machines, a sink, and some tables and chairs packed the cramped room. Lucius’ biggest secret didn’t look to accommodate many workers. For how few people seemed to be there, it was a mess, too. Plates and bowls of half-eaten food were left out on one of the tables. She stepped out of the doorway and continued into the intersection.
The path to her right led to a security office with a keypad entry. The clear glass booth seemed out of place, unless people were required to check in with security before going anywhere else, but that would mean a great number of people passed through the base to justify building it. Cora turned her head, following the path people would take to the other end of the hall. That was it - a heavy blue door at the end of the hall. Biometrics, a keypad, retinal scanners, whatever the secret was, it had to be hidden beyond the door. She rushed ahead.
In the event there wasn’t a hacker on the other end of her comm, Cora trained for a year to defeat systems like these. It was time consuming, required tools she didn’t have, and two working hands wouldn’t hurt, either. She knelt in front of the door, examining the key panel. The design was either so new she hadn’t seen it before, or a custom job specifically for the base. Either way, she was going to need to interface it with her Arcadia to begin tinkering. Without thinking, she reached with her right hand to swipe out her screen, her shoulder tensed with dull pain and jarred her. A second flare of agony pressed into her lungs as she flinched, a broken rib now making her right side useless.
As she rubbed at her shoulder and tried to regain focus, she picked up a whisper.
“You think it’s safe?”
“I don’t know.”
“I haven’t heard any gunfire in a while.”
The voices came from behind her. She shook her head, disgusted with herself. The janitor’s closet. Had someone been hiding in wait for her, they would have had the drop on her by now. She stood up, using the strap of the Preshnekov as a guide to keep the rifle braced against her shoulder. She walked back down the hall and stood in the doorway to the break room, faced at the closet.
“Come out now or I start shooting,” she warned, her voice a raspy and garbled mess. It hurt to force words through her bruised throat.
The handle to the closet turned and opened slow. A red-headed human male in dress shirt and tie walked out, and behind him, a short-haired brunette with frumpy, casual office attire. Both of them held their hands up, trembling as Cora stared them down.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The man bowed his head and stared at the floor. The woman stared daggers at Cora, like she was itching to start something, but looked so mousy and weak it would have been a sternly-worded email to Human Resources. Cora shrugged and cocked her head to the side.
“Actually, I don’t care who either of you are,” she sighed. “I just want to know if you can get me through that door over there.”
“We won’t assist some assassin,” the woman hissed. Her German accent only made her sound more catty than she looked.
Cora shook her head and locked eyes with her more timid coworker. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m afraid I won’t have any use for either of you, then.”
She aimed the rifle at him first. As predicted, he folded immediately. He stepped forward and clasped his hands to plea for his life.
“I can help you,” he said. “Please, don’t kill me. I will help you.”
Cora stared at him a second longer, making sure her point was made. She waved the barrel of her rifle in the direction of the door. Both of them walked over, the man in the lead. He approached the display screen above the keypad and pressed his hand to it. While it started a scan, the retinal scanner arm on the door sprang to life, moving into position at his face.
With the scan complete, the technician punched in his key code. A light blinked green and he opened the door. Cora readied herself for another guard behind the door, but there was nothing. Beyond the door was an empty, sprawling room, filled with holographic computer stations and a gigantic viewing screen at the far wall. She again used the barrel to motion them forward and followed close behind.
One side of the room was all metal racks and servers, not unlike the Project Ashes server room. The other side of the room had desks and various screens lit up in the air. The screen on the wall looked to be in a rest state, only displaying a white logo of a phoenix on a blue background. Cora waited until the door shut behind her and she was convinced the three of them were alone in the room. She set her weapon on the mousy brunette.
“You didn’t want to help, so you’re dragging a chair over there,” Cora pointed to an empty space between the desks and the server racks. “You twitch, you die. Understand?”
The woman’s lip curled, but she nodded, grabbing a chair from a nearby desk. She dragged it to the center of the room and sat down. Cora turned her attention to the man. He was young, in his mid-thirties, just old enough to have a family and something to lose.
“I want to know everything,” she said. She used the raspy, pained, croak of her voice to sound more threatening. “Lie to me, try anything, I don’t shoot you. You see the sword on my back?”
The man nodded vigorously.
“You do anything but what I ask of you, you start losing body parts. Am I clear?”
“Yes. Very clear,” he replied.
“Good. What is Project Phoenix for?”
The man cocked his head to the side. His eyes squinted. “You don’t know?”
“Careful,” Cora warned.
“No, please, I didn’t mean offense,” he replied, his tone mee
k. He wouldn’t even make eye contact. “I’m surprised you’d come all this way without knowing why. But, I can show you.”
Cora thought about it a moment. If he was even remotely good with computers, he could easily send a message without her knowing. The risk was worth it. This guy didn’t seem like the hero type. She nodded, waving her head toward the desks. He sat down at one of the stations, logged in, and started typing. Cora moved to stand over his shoulder, where she could keep his hands and the brunette in view. The screen on the wall came to life, projecting his display. On it, a map of the world, covered in small red and blue dots.
“Project Phoenix is one of the most comprehensive sorting matrixes in the world,” he said, his voice proud. “Two millennia of antiquities, sorted against a genealogy system that seeks to track the population of earth to find bloodlines likely matching the original owners.”
“For what purpose?” Cora asked.
“The objects are mundane by themselves,” he replied. “These museum pieces only become magical in the hands of their intended owners. We call them artifacts.”
Cora put her hand on her hip and relaxed, but only enough that she could still get to her katana at moment’s notice. “So, these artifacts...are magical weapons, but only in the hand of one person that shares a bloodline?”
The man shook his head. “No, it has to be more than that. The AI we built is looking for people that not only fit the criteria, but are already exceptional themselves. That’s what makes them a good candidate. It’s not every person that shares a bloodline...from we understand, it’s just one person to one artifact.”
Cora took a deep breath. She wanted answers, but nothing could be so simple. She felt like she’d need to sit through an entire lecture to fully wrap her head around it.
“What happens if someone is on the list?” Cora asked.
The man pursed his lips and shifted in his seat. Cora reached back and put her hand on the pommel of her sword.
“Do I really have to ask again?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “If they’re flagged, the information will be sent to a team local to the suspected artifact holder. They confirm it, and then appropriate steps are taken to eliminate them.”
“Eliminate them? Project Phoenix is looking for magical items, tracking them to their owner, only so they can be killed?” Cora raised her voice.
“Not always killed,” he replied. He tried reassuring Cora, but it wasn’t working. “Prison is the first option. You don’t understand. Lucius has given us a gift!”
“A gift?” Cora seethed.
He motioned to the screen. “These artifacts are dangerous. Lucius woke from his hibernation and brought us a warning! We can be proactive to stop these objects from ending up in the hands of these people before they become too powerful to stop them.”
Cora’s brow furrowed. She looked at thousands of dots all over the world. “Are these people all military? Did they sign up as combatants, knowing they could die?”
“I mean,” the man paused, looking down. “No. Very few of them have military backgrounds. The threat remains, though. We must act quickly. We’re only in the infancy of the project. The system has only verified 15 of a suspected 687.”
Cora raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very specific number.”
The man tapped through a few screens, landing on a display of three-dimensional spheres broken down into grids. Each of them had names listed, all of them female - Francis, Rebecca, Talia, and so on.
“These are the AI nodes that check the parameters of the museum items we’re looking for,” the man explained. “Every one of them has predicted that same number with the criteria we’re using. When the list is fully compiled, it will have 687 artifacts on the list, intended for 687 targets.”
“According to Lucius, all of these people need to eliminated?”
“They’re a threat,” the woman said from her chair. “Didn’t you hear him?”
Cora snapped her attention to the brunette. She still stared at Cora with contempt in her eyes. It took a second to realize why it seemed so personal to the woman.
“Am I on the list?” Cora asked the man.
He turned in his chair, looking up to Cora with a shrug. “I don’t know. What is your name?”
“Cora Blake.”
The man and the woman exchanged glances. The brunette’s mouth fell open.
“What? What is it?” Cora demanded.
The man took a breath. “There is a small list of top-priority persons that the AI is set to check against for possible matches. You are one of them.”
“Show me,” Cora said. The man hesitated. Emphasizing her point, she drew the sword off her back. “Now.”
He complied, typing up a storm, swiping into and out of screens. Once he found what he was looking for, the map reappeared on the screen and zoomed into North America. There, under Washington, DC, the name Cora Blake appeared with a red star, where everyone else was a dot. Beneath her name, it had a listing for artifact, the space filled with question marks. Below that, there were links to access more information. They were labeled File, History, and Surveillance.
Cora’s eyes moved around the map as she tried to make sense of it. In her hometown of Chicago, she saw the dot for her mother’s name. A chill ran down her spine. In Wyoming, she saw the name Sitting Bear, her estranged uncle. The chill in her turned to fire, spiking her adrenaline. Beneath his name was another - Still River. Her father. Anger boiled over to rage. She pointed at his name on the screen.
“What the hell is my father doing on this list? Still River has been dead for fourteen years!” Cora yelled, accusing him. She stepped back, raising her sword to his neck.
The man shook his head, terrified these were his last moments. “I...I don’t know! I swear, I don’t know. There’s no information on him since...”
He typed frantically, swiping through screens and hammering fingers on the the keyboard displayed on his desk. “News reports of his death back in 2068...nothing since. It’s probably just his relation to you, the genealogy AI put him there in error.”
Cora quivered with the force of all the adrenaline and magic running through her veins. She breathed through her nose like a bull ready to charge. It took every ounce of restraint to lower the sword.
“If this is what you’re doing here, Lucius’ great work, then what is the other location for?”
The man’s perplexed look was matched by the brunette.
“What other location?” he asked.
Cora lifted her sword again, so fast that the man winced and visibly wet himself.
“Please!” he started to cry. “I swear, I don’t know anything about another location!”
“He’s telling the truth,” the brunette replied. Her aggravating sneer had turned to concern and sincerity. “We were never told there was another location. Perhaps they’re a double-blind mirror for us? An independent lab to confirm what our AI has found?”
Not only did it sound plausible, but the soaking puddle in the technician’s chair left little room to doubt them. They didn’t know what Lucius was up to, either. The amount of answers she was going to get started to dwindle. There was one lingering thought remaining, however, that might be her ticket on a plane back to the UNS.
“You’re logging these...artifacts,” she said, lowering her sword from the technician’s throat. “How do you plan to get a hold of them?”
The man wiped tears from his eyes. He exhaled a long breath, choosing his words.
“The artifact list will be completed long before we identify their owners,” he said. “So, once the list is compiled, Susan will coordinate a strike.”
“Susan?” Cora asked.
“My AI,” the brunette replied. She tried to hide the coy upturn of a smirk, but it didn’t obscure her pride. “Susan will map the locations of every artifact in the world. We will have inside men, PMC’s, and thieves moved into position, and they will hit every target simultaneously.”
&
nbsp; Cora scoffed. “How does Lucius plan to hide his involvement in the biggest heist in human history?”
“He won’t have to,” the woman smiled back. “Once it’s done, he can take credit for it. He’ll have saved us from a new kind of war, one we’ve never seen before.”
Without thinking, Cora rolled her shoulders. She grimaced, waiting for another piercing pain to shoot through her arm. The sore, ripped muscle hurt, but not as bad as she expected. She dismissed it, either because she had lost so much blood she was starting to go into shock or so much adrenaline was moving through her that she couldn’t feel it if a truck hit her.
“Alright,” she sighed, sheathing her katana. She put her good arm back on the rifle. “Both of you need to leave. Now. Run for your lives, actually. You have cars?”
The technician nodded. “Around the side of the building.”
“Perfect,” Cora replied. “Get in them and drive like I’m chasing you. Because I might.”
Both of them stood up from their chairs with caution, staring at Cora like she might unload her clip at any second.
“Run!” Cora shouted, sending them scrambling like rats.
She waited until she heard the doors close before setting her backpack on the desk. As she unzipped it, she looked at the giant display on the far wall, trying to commit as much to memory as might be of use. Red dots were people. Blue dots were artifacts. She glanced down at her work, removing the metal case from her pack, then back to the screen. The Museum of Natural History. Buckingham Palace. She didn’t even know there was a museum in there. The names didn’t stand out, either. George Earp in Texas. Father Juan Delgado in Mexico. She looked for the names with stars. Staff Sergeant Julian Penel in London. She said the names over to herself, grateful it no longer hurt to whisper.
Unpacking the reddish-orange bricks of Semtex and their detonator caps, it took several minutes to set them up. The whole while, she glossed over every inch of the screen. Alan James in Kansas. An 18th century medical supply bag. She’d never be able to keep track of all of it, but she looked for things that were easy to remember and recited them back to herself. Her hands stayed busy, with an occasional glance to make sure she wasn’t making a mistake that would turn her to pudding on the walls.
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