by Landon Wark
At the base of the ladder was a much larger sphere, the culmination of the sphere maker's art. Lit with strange blue lights made of the rock itself that, if one were to examine them closely, would be revealed to be the result of the rock being eaten slowly away, converted into light.
Within the large sphere, among the tables and diagrams and blue notebooks, head held in his hand as he went through the notes, sat Jonah McAllister.
His lips pursed as he traced a line along the schematic diagram laid out on the table and looked over at the clustering of parts lying on the rock floor of the cavern where he worked.
He was a second rate engineer and he knew it. The commercial-grade generator had been working when the delivery crew had brought it in and he could see no reason why he couldn't seem to put it back together into working condition after having stripped some of its component pieces. It was a headache in what he was fast regarding to be a doomed endeavour.
Money was all well and good, but the true currency of the modern world was electricity. And he could not find a way to reliably reproduce it using his own techniques.
Of course he had been able to summon it from the sky back at the house. And he could make gasoline to make the damn thing run. Hell, he could sit there and chant words at it to turn the turbine. But the goal, his goal since coming to this place was to make it run itself. Free electricity.
But there was no way without a person sitting there chanting.
And he could not replicate a person's chanting with any of the recording equipment he had tried so far.
When it came to the new power, there needed to be a person, something with will on the other end.
He stood from the table, having reached his limit and unable to work on the problem anymore. Maybe it would be best for him to wait. Wait until there were Acolytes more well versed in physics than he was.
The gaunt face and dark eyes of Carmen Carruthers came to his mind. Though he could not say that it actually was her, his memory of facial features was about as good as his engineering skills. She was the reason he had been able to construct the bunker he sat in, and had discovered it completely by accident. The same way he had blown out the wall of his cursed apartment, Carmen had somehow taken the incendiary procedure that released heat energy from an object and, through a strange quirk of speech had managed to release pure light energy.
If he had managed to convince Sandy to send her away as he had wanted, the cavern would not be possible.
Wondering exactly what other mutations were possible was nearly overwhelming and caused such profound terror in him that his mind refused to fully process the thought. The alternative was to do nothing, to squirrel away whatever power he could and make sure it never saw the light of day. And he had seen the results of that in fire that had consumed the house.
And Carmen and the others were gone now.
All they could do was make sure everything was sanitized, prepared for the masses. And so there were the levels of training and the weeding out. He had to admit, the anything is possible tagline did seem to be a bit of a bait and switch when the reality behind it was a multi-tiered vetting process.
Maybe he was just looking at it through tired eyes.
He called for coffee and the vessel materialized next to him. Even making the liquid from nothing was fast becoming a chore. He thought back to what they had done with Sandy, altering the mitochondrial membranes in a person had been difficult, but the results had been promising. Maybe he could alter the dopamine receptors in his own brain to fire more readily. Clayton James had eluded to something similar...
He paused. Yes, he needed others. He needed help. He looked around the mostly barren chamber deep within the earth in a place he did not know, or even really speak the language. There was one lifeline to his own sanity, and she was rarely around anymore, she was off trying to bring in more people.
But the vetting process was too slow and too stringent. But it was necessary.
The wheels of his mind spun out and he inhaled deeply, reminding himself to stay on the path he had chosen. Stay on target. Stick to the plan and everyone will understand eventually. He exhaled in a shudder.
Then you'll have... others.
The anything is possible tagline didn't line up well with patience.
Come on, McAllister.
He turned his attention back to the problem at hand. It was easier than trying to figure out other people anyway.
Maybe there was a way he could alter the metal specific parts of the generator the way they had altered certain atoms in the molecules of Sandy's membranes. He tapped his fingers, pulling out a few of the textbooks that littered the room. If he could set up some kind of differential in the metal it might be able to create an electric current. But to do it himself, without the help of others like with Sandy, he would need a simple metal. One with as few electrons as possible. Hydrogen would be ideal, but there was no way to make a pure metal, the same with helium. Lithium was too reactive to not oxide in air, which left beryllium.
He pawed through some of the books on his shelf and grumbled.
He had left most of his chemistry manuals upstairs.
Serge Novak rubbed his stubbled chops and emerged from the hazy realm of sleep for what seemed like the fifth time of the night. He exhaled quietly to avoid waking his wife.
Time was that he wouldn't worry about whether the woman next to him was awake or not, but time also was when he could sleep through the entire night. As his father had said, on the rare occasions he was home and not spending the night with one of his mistresses: Upon entering middle age a man realized there were things he wanted to build to outlive him when he died.
And with that want came sleepless nights.
While growing up he had envied the men living in the high towers and the penthouses. They rolled up on the curb in huge, shining sedans, beautiful women on their arms and large men hanging on behind them like the Sultans and Czars of old. But even as he had fought and killed his way up the ladder, he had never conceded how much work it actually was. There were too many judges to pay off and witnesses to threaten. And then there were the goddamn politicians who, while on the right side of the quintessential lead/silver bargain, were weighing a little too heavily on the scale.
While he admitted that the role of an oligarch (even a minor one) sometimes required a little blood being shed, he did not enjoy it, mostly because of the work involved in covering it up. It involved even higher people poking their noses around, determined to impose limits, at least temporary ones. Worse, it involved the possibility that the replacement might be even worse than the one he was getting rid of. Elections were slightly out of his sphere and even if he could manage to get some benevolent intervention there was no way to be certain that the rigger wasn't rigging for his own benefit.
With wants also came a lack of trust.
He was about to begin the last phase of his nightly ritual: wondering if he could get out with both his money and his life.
A shout from the hallway jolted Serge. At least he thought it was a shout. His hearing was not what it once was."Christ," he groaned.
"The fuck is going on?" Natalia muttered with her face still pressed into the sheet.
They had been married for nearly thirty years and she had never lost the mouth that he had fallen in love with. Unfortunately, that was about all of the women he had fallen in love with that remained.
"I don't know," Serge struggled to kick the blankets off his gut. "Goddamn guards watching the fights."
"Tell them to get the fuck out of my house," Nat slurred.
Serge shuffled to the bedroom door, ensured he was wearing underwear and grabbed Nat's robe hanging on the chair. He had paid for a vintage coat rack that had belonged to some fucking arch-duke or other and she couldn't use it. He grumbled a little, suddenly aware, as he was more often lately, that he was looking all of his fifty-six years and then some. The rigours of maintaining the supply of... entertainment to this city had aged him
to the point where he felt the weakness that caused his underlings to salivate when they thought he was out of earshot more and more.
Sounds of commotion from down the hall became louder as he approached the door.
If the children hadn't moved out years prior he might have concluded they were carrying out one of their damned raucous parties with some of their asshole friends.
Serge cracked the door open and stuck his head out into the lights of the hallway. There was no one to be seen at the small desk a ways down where the pair of guards were usually stationed. They were trusted men, mostly, but were prone to watching fights from the west on their phones. Still, the station should have been manned by at least one lazy asshole hunched over a flickering screen.
Serge pursed his lips, furious at the incompetence.
The abrupt bang of a gunshot made him jump, banging his hand against the door.
A hand, holding a pistol dropped to the floor in front of the elevator door. Even with the sudden shock gnawing at him Serge could see part of the gun and even part of the hand eaten away. Behind him, Nat scrambled against the blankets of their bed, pulling herself into a sitting position.
"Serge!"
"Get into the closet!" Serge hissed.
Within the back of the closet was a small hatch that led into the fortified room that was installed in all penthouses in the city. Oligarchs did not submit willingly to the guillotine in this part of the world.
He forced himself into a measured walk to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer with a quivering, but functional hand. He gripped the heavy gun inside with his left hand and the clip to be loaded into it with the right. When he had first bought it he imagined the silver inlays inspiring the same feelings of awe and reverence he had first had watching the powerful men on the curbside, but now he just found them ostentatious.
As the clip slid into the base of the weapon he heard Nat pulling open the hatch, a sound that only barely drowned out footfalls in the hallway.
Serge's mind raced and a bead of sweat dribbled down the side of his aging face. Was it the greedy politician? A rival? One of his own underlings? He shook his head. There would be time to figure out who was responsible later. If he survived.
Fucking guards! You paid them all that money to just lay down and die.
Serge continued his forced march back toward the door, gripping the pistol with his right hand, trying to remember when the last time was when he had actually fired it.
After locking the bedroom door he stood behind it, gun gripped with both hands. His finger hovered just above the trigger. For a moment he considered joining Nat within the walls of the closet, but there was barely enough room for one and worse: How could he survive being known as the man who hid in the wall like a woman when there was trouble at his own door?
He was no coward. His hand may shake a little since losing the coldness of his youth to the daily grinding warmness of family life, but he was still no coward.
Two pairs of footfalls approached the door, soon joined by a third. He caught a few syllables of words before they tried the knob. He inhaled sharply at the rattle.
After a second there were the sounds of more words, strange ones. As Serge's eyes widened the knob of the bedroom door was engulfed by a bright light with a greenish tinge. It grew in intensity and then vanished, taking the knob with it.
His mind cut to faded memories of one of the science-fiction TV shows he would watch as a boy, of a Martian death ray in action. His recognition was interrupted by the door flying open.
He pulled the trigger of the gun as a human figure stepped through the frame. The figure slid against the edge of the door, blood pouring from a wound in his upper arm.
A second figure said something that Serge could not make out.
He pulled the trigger a second time, this time with the muzzle pointed at the second figure. There was the snap of the firing pin hitting the casing and then... silence. Misfire. The second figure lashed out with a fist, striking Serge on the jaw. His ear rang and the world swam for a moment before he caught hold of the wall.
"Sons of bitches!" Serge spat as he regained his equilibrium. "Who sent you!"
The third man stepped into the room. Serge re-aimed his gun and pulled the trigger again. Nothing. He ejected the defective round and pulled the trigger. Nothing.
The third figure extended a hand and said something. Against the wall, Serge's hand felt the wall become soft and his skin sink into the fluidic drywall. He pulled against it, but the wall refused to let go of him, becoming solid once again in an instant.
His mind spun as he tried to aim the gun, oblivious to the knowledge that it refused to work anymore. One of the intruders, his face a grimace of hatred and rage stepped forward. Serge pitched the useless gun at him, but with his arm pinned in the wall there was little strength in it and the intruders batted it away.
A fist flashed and Serge staggered back against the wall, twisting his arm. His ears rang louder.
No one had sent the intruders, of that he was now certain. There was too much madness in the blows for this to be strictly about business.
"I want you to think about my little brother," the one stalking towards him confirmed what he already knew. "Rotting away in some hole. I know you don't remember him. He got caught smuggling your shit."
The third intruder pulled the injured man to his feet as the first stood, just outside of Serge's grasp.
"Your brother was a mewling bitch!" Serge, still unsure of exactly what was going on, fell back on schoolyard taunts.
"He was," the man agreed grimly. "But he was blood."
The man reached out a hand and started to speak something.
Serge coughed, a wet deep cough. His lungs burned. He tried to curse once more, but all that came out was a gurgle. Bitter tasting spittle filled the back of his throat with a few more hacks. His mind spun with uncomprehending panic, trying to wrench his hand out of the wall. He spat, fruitlessly trying to purge his throat and lungs of the bitter fluid that was inexplicably filling him. Serge fell to his knees as the edges of his vision dimmed.
The door to the closet burst open and the last sight that the minor lord of this city had was that of his wife bursting out of the closet, pistol barking in a futile attempt to save his life.
Roused from the near constant state of semi-sleep that hung over her, Aegera picked over the sounds of the small office in the back of the garage that she had claimed as her place of business and study. A few sheets full of refinements to the spells that Jonah had churned out scattered along the desk and to the floor as her elbow slipped, a consequence of the jerking motion of her start. Unconsciously she began picking them up, wincing at the old dates on the pages before she realized what the noise that had pulled her from her stupor was.
After a few more rings she managed to find the antiquated flip-style phone—a burner phone they had called it—and read the notification on its screen before the device vibrated in her hand.
The first rule of magic club: voice only, no texts.
It was actually rule seven or eight, but her brain had slotted all the rules alongside the pop culture segment of her brain and retrieved them accordingly.
"Yes?" she answered. The call was from a number she thought belonged to one of her Adepts, but her memory was too hazy at the moment to be sure.
The first rule of magic club: no caller ID.
"-need you!" The voice on the other end of the phone was frantic and laced with an accent that made the English nearly impossible to make out. As she, with equal urgency, tried to calm the caller he slipped into the regional dialect and burst through an entire conversation she couldn't begin to understand.
There was a commotion over the line, of the phone being knocked around and then a woman's voice took over.
"This... Christine." Her English was even more broken, but at least her voice was calm. "I... Initiate. Also, EMT. They call me here."
"I—Okay, Christine. What's going on? What is
happening?" Aegera over-enunciated.
"They call me here," she repeated. "They call you."
"Yes." Was it some kind of drunk dial.
"They help need. There... will be big trouble."
Diagnostic Failure
They burst into his room while he was sitting with his hands to his temples, on the verge of sleep, still trying to retain the thoughts that he was working on. It was a losing battle, but one he felt was necessary to fight.
The spike of adrenaline with the pounding on the door woke Jonah McAllister's mind to its fullest.
He was in the process of both defending himself and asking what was going on when the people barging through his door plopped the body of a man down on the stack of papers in the centre of his table. Blood spurted and flowed over the tabletop, staining the papers red. Their words were still barely visible on their faces, and as he tried to salvage as many of them as he could, blood smearing all over his fingers, Aegera grasped his hand.
"What the hell is going on?" he asked frantically.
"They won't take him to a hospital," she replied with forced measure. "He's one of my Adepts."
Jonah tried to wipe the sticky blood from his hands onto his clothes. Brief germophobia rose within him before being overwhelmed by the horror of a fresh spurt of blood gushing over his desk.
"Why did you bring him here?!" he asked of two of the other Adepts who had come in with them.