by Landon Wark
"Has anyone figured out why a person's attention directs the spell?" Lanying asked.
"Wish we k—" Tom was in the process of saying when the lights overhead flickered and then went out. Flood lamps positioned in the corners clicked on, throwing an eerie yellow tinge over the workspace.
Tom's pulse quickened and his brow lowered.
A powerful bang broke open the personnel door, lifting it almost entirely off its hinges. As the heavy wood swayed back and forth on the twisted metal tabs a small metal canister sailed through the air and bounced with a clang against the floor.
What exactly it was registered only briefly in Tom's mind before it split apart with a bang louder than the one that split the door by a factor of ten. A bright blossom of light overwhelmed his eyes . He threw his arms up over his face on pure instinct, the world around him becoming a cacophony of the ringing of his ears, the panicked blood pounding through his arteries and the shouting of the Adepts.
They're after us. Tom's brain spun a fast rationale for what was happening.
"Get—" he managed before the blurry outlines of human-like figures against the glare from the door gave him pause.
Out.
Gathering what little was left of his clarity he spat a spell into the floor. He had no way to tell if it was successful or not, but the space within the garage should have become an impassable haze of blur for everyone. Aggy had once told him that it could make a car undriveable.
You fuckin' wankers are coming for my kids!
There were shouts all around and as his hand came down on what he instinctively knew was a human body he shoved it towards the side of the shop furthest from the personnel door. As he reached the far wall Tom's vision began to clear of the effect of the blinding light and he could make out black figures stumbling through the blurry room along with the Adepts huddled down with him. One of them, he couldn't tell who exactly was pawing at a panel next to the corrugated metal wall.
A door. The large rear garage door for automobiles.
He thought there might be a spell that would lift the door from the ground enough for them to duck underneath, but any that were swimming around his head within reach would likely obliterate them standing this close to it. A switch. There had to be a switch to operate the damn thing. But as his eyes took in the dark, greyish in the thin light coming in through the windows he could tell there would be no power to lift it.
One of the black blobs reached what looked like a tendrils out at him, clutching almost blindly at his shoulder. Tom wrenched away and lobbed a spell at whatever the thing was. It recoiled, the plastic of its helmet visor bubbling under the heat of it.
The follow-up was the entirely instinctive thrusting of his fist into the Impenetrable blackness of the man turned creature.
Tom's father had tried to teach him how to make a proper fist and throw a punch. Something about bullies at school that was a lifetime away. But little boy Tom had been more interested in nail polish and eyeliner (which might have explained the bullies, especially in rural England).
Impact shot up his arm and he recoiled, almost certain that he had broken something. The fog of adrenaline and shock quickly numbed the pain. The blur dropped back a step, but was already shouting over its comrades who were still bumbling around blindly. The other blobs carefully swept closer.
Hand up over his face one of the Adept blobs slipped past him and shoved the soldier who staggered another few steps into the others. Another Adept rose up and took a swing at Tom who pulled away and suddenly cursed his fashion choices. The first Adept got a handle on the second and pulled him back towards the door which refused to open regardless of the amount of pawing the Adepts performed.
Aw, fuck it. Tom thought as the shadowy figures regrouped. The glimmer was beginning to dissipate from the air and once it was gone completely any caution on the part of the armoured men was going out the window. He could do a recast, but it would only buy them a bit of time if they couldn't get the door open.
From somewhere behind him Tom could, over the commotion of the soldiers organizing, hear the beginnings of a spell coming from the lips of one of the Adepts. Some of the sounds were familiar and upon recognizing the main components of the spell he froze.
"Sto—" he tried to call out for them to stop, but the last of it got out before the command fully formed.
Force rippled out against the wall and the corrugations of the door bent and warped, the bottom of it kicking out. The force slammed into Tom's legs, buckling his knees and twisting his hips. He felt the air pushed out of his lungs before he was knocked to the floor, coughing and spluttering. The taste of metallic blood bit into his tongue as he landed against the work table, pain dancing playfully along his shoulder. His head spun and the blur around him disappeared into the blur and ringing in his head. He coughed, feeling a trail of blood dripping onto his shirt and then the floor.
As his head rolled involuntarily to the side he could see the thin wedge of daylight glaring from the buckled out corrugated steel of the door.
The Adepts were slinking across the floor of the garage, each in their own separate dazes. He thought that maybe one or two of the soldiers/cops had been knocked over, but largely his kids had just scored a huge own-goal. Two of the slinking figures managed their way around the obstacles of their fallen comrades into the flare of the daylight.
His head still ringing and his mind barely grasping the reason he attempted to flop his way onto his legs, hip aching. A blunt force slammed into his side. Pain exploded up his sciatic nerve and he cried as it bore him into the cold concrete of the floor. The flat force kicked him over onto his stomach and something grappled at his hands, pinning them behind his back.
Run, you glorious fuckers, was the first thought that managed to claw its way through the din in his head as he was pulled onto his feet and a wedge of cloth was shoved against his tongue.
A Call to Arms
The heater in the truck was broken and the chill air from outside had crept in through the shoddy repair jobs in the body. Exactly what San... Aegera's fascination was with old broken down vehicles he could not fathom, fewer credit checks he supposed.
Jonah stretched his arms against the dash and rolled his head on his shoulders in an attempt to ring some warmth out of his own body. He thought there might be some in his hind-quarters, but the lack of space in the truck prevented stretching that way, and it was a temporary solution at that. He frowned and tried to shake the cold from his mind by deciphering what little he could of the labelling on the truck's dashboard.
They sat in the middle of a swell of traffic. All three lanes of the thoroughfare were clogged—as far as he could tell—for a good kilometer into the city ahead of them.
Besides the traffic and the cold his spirits were high. The tests had gone well and with a little tinkering he was confident that he could have a production run of close quarters anti-firearm measures within a week. Maybe a couple dozen or so. From there it was simply a matter of teaching a few of the Initiates to do it and they would have an infinite supply. Well, more than enough to let the rank and file hold off a well armed opposing force. And, after that he could continue his work uninterrupted, his conscience a little clearer. He leaned his head back on the headrest and allowed his mind to wander a little.
"I can't believe you're not freezing," Aegera interrupted.
Crouched over the steering wheel, her gloved fingers pressing into the vinyl, she made for a pathetic figure. Almost reminiscent of the way he remembered her from the hospital months prior. He wondered if it was the reduction in her body fat that was making her feel colder or the fact that she had never experienced cold of this magnitude before. He decided not to ask.
"Where I'm from this is mid-spring," he replied.
She glanced over at him. There was a little hostility in her eyes. Most likely because of his disregard for the Adepts. His 'interrupters' (he was still working on the name) in the back had helped a little, but the fact that he was s
till adamant that there was little he could do about the situation still hung in the air between them. He could see no real way to stop it. But, the violence would only last for a short while. As long as they kept working, kept researching and kept recruiting, the world would be better.
"We're going to make it there," he said, half to Aegera and half to the vapours that were pouring out of his mouth with each breath. "There's going to be a better world."
"I don't doubt that," she muttered. "But it doesn't—"
Almost as if the universe wanted to argue directly, the lyrical tone of the phone at Aegera's side overwhelmed the rattle of the failing heater. Jonah nearly lunged for the wheel as she fumbled between her pockets before whipping out the flip phone and pinching it gingerly between her ear and shoulder. The truck coasted to a gentle stop only a centimetre from the bumper of the car ahead.
"You want me to take th—You're gonna drive and do that too, all right," Jonah muttered as she said her greetings into the phone, slumping back into his seat.
"Wh—slow down, Lianne!" Aegera nudged the truck forward and just as quickly pushed down on the brake. "What happened?"
The vehicle jostled again and Jonah reached over and pulled the phone off of Aegera's shoulder, studied it for a moment and then toggled the speaker function. A panicky voice, already mid-sentence came through the cheap, tinny speaker.
"—help. The police broke into our session."
"What? How?!" Amid the flurry of half formed words that followed, Aegera managed to break in. "Where's Tom, Lianne?"
"Got taken," the woman replied. "Everyone did. I—"
The phone trilled and an eerie silence followed. Jonah examined the tiny screen and noticed the connectivity icon was missing. A glance around at the other cars revealed the other drivers turning their devices over and one passenger to the rear right was whacking theirs. A chill played down his spine.
"They killed the cell network," he said bleakly.
"Shit!" Had the car been moving at that point he had no doubt that Aegera would have slammed on the brake. Her eyes darted over the dash as her condensed breath formed ice crystals on the upper windshield.
"What the hell is happening?" he asked, partly knowing the answer.
"The meeting place is a little more than half a mile from here," Aegera said.
"Well, we're not getting there anytime soon," Jonah replied. "We're not going to be able to—"
"Can you get us there?" she asked, her eyes staring at the car in front of them with homicidal intent.
"What?"
"Can you get us there with the teleportation thing?"
"I—"
"They're our responsibility, Jonah. And they need help."
"We can't just jump in there blind, Sandy," Jonah said. "The best thing we can do is—"
"I'm not going to lose anyone else, Jonah. Not like we did back at the house."
Jonah hung his head as the bleak, metallic despair that had filled him at the sight of the burning wood and blistering window glass returned.
"You want a better world? You want anything to be possible? You say that it can happen in our time. Well, this is it, Jonah. It's not going to happen if we keep letting people push us out, make us run."
Jonah clenched his fists. As much as the fear clung to him, as much as the realization of exactly what the violence that loomed before him meant, he was angry. He was sick of being pushed out, of being right but having to give ground anyway. But... The understanding of his own mortality beat him back into his seat.
Maybe we have to be more than mortal.
"Then send me," Aegera said, sensing his indecision. "I'll go."
He hung his head further. Looking at the thoroughfare suddenly become filled with a type of mundane desolation around him. He looked at the blissfully annoyed drivers and their bored passengers.
"I can't send just you. The person speaking the procedure has to go. It's everyone else that's optional," he said.
She stared at him and he let out a shuddering sigh.
"Okay." Jonah opened the door of the truck and placed his foot on the icy road. The word was so small to convey such a monumental shift. "But I think you've been reading too many books."
"Haven't had time for that in months," she replied with a self-satisfied smile.
Jonah threw off the tarp from the rear of the truck and fumbled around with the tubing inside, reading the notes he had attached to each one before tossing them aside. His brain churned through a number of factors before selecting the four that had performed best and handing two to Aegera.
"They're made of beryllium so they're brittle," he said with a quiver in his voice, focusing on the tubes to keep his chest-tightening anxiety at bay. "They're not weapons. They're so we don't get shot. Effective range is about twenty-five meters. Maybe a quarter of the length of a football field. Anything more and you'll have to rely on the shooter being a bad shot."
"So, like a stormtrooper?"
"Whatever." He stepped into the bed of the truck and extended a hand to her. "We'll be able to transport further the higher up we are."
"Is that the official nomenclature we're using? Transporting? It's a little Trekky. Sorry, I'm just trying to cut the tension."
"You wanna name it, go right ahead."
"Little too nervous right now." Aegera exhaled heavily. "It's going to work."
"We don't even know what we're getting into."
"Okay! Let's just go before we talk ourselves out of it!"
"Where's your meeting place?" Jonah's heart beat quickly as the traffic broke up a little and the cars behind them honked madly as the two of them crawled on top of their vehicle.
"I... See where this street intersects with the first side street? About five blocks North and two West. Maybe you can put us on one of the roofs. We can get a lay of the land that way."
Jonah shook his head. "One miscalculation would put us in midair over the street and unless you can get through the levitation procedure in the four seconds it'd take you to hit the ground..."
"Shit."
"Yeah, this is a lousy idea."
Jonah started speaking through the procedure. His brain performed the calculations involved in putting them in a spot not too close to where Aegera had said lest they get caught up in some riot already in progress. He placed his hands over his ears in an attempt to drown out the distracting honks of the vehicles around them.
"What about walls?" he heard Aegera say as he approached the end and the air around them began to tingle against his skin. "We don't want to jump into anything sol—"
Jonah's eyes were blinded by the flash of white light and he felt the expected but sudden jolt of motion.
On the thoroughfare the mood of drudging annoyance lifted and the honking of cars died away as the motorists who, up until the instant it happened had been boiling with anger towards the pair standing on the rear of their rusted out old truck, blinked once and opened their door to stare at the place where those two imbeciles had disappeared into a flash of light.
The street emerged from the white light around them and Aegera had to grasp around for something to hold onto as the feeling of motion suddenly ceased and she felt with all certainty that she should be flying through the air.
"The molecular density of solids and liquids makes the electron interference too great to displace them. It's not possible to jump into walls," Jonah was already saying as she reeled backward, bracing her back against a chain link fence running along the outside of an adjacent building, carefully keeping the rods in her hands from brushing against the side.
"Shit," he heard her say and swung around to see a pair of jittery looking piles of black plastic armour scrambling to point a pair of whatever kind of rifle the police used in this area.
The response was as automatic as the spike of adrenaline hitting his nervous system. For a brief instant he was proud that the words were so ingrained into him that he was able to wield them the same way his would strike out with a hand
or foot.
The two of them were swept to the ground as their legs kicked out from under them with the sound of a bone breaking and a scream of surprise and agony echoing across the alley. Satisfied and proud for a moment Jonah recoiled when he heard one of the thrashing piles shouting something into a radio mounted on his shoulder and both still pointing their weapons towards him. He shuddered, holding his arms out defensively before his face as they managed to squeeze the trigger.
Pop
The gunshot was loud and Jonah felt his bladder loosen slightly before realizing that nothing had actually happened.
Pop. Bang.
One fallen soldier screamed as his weapon exploded in his hands, ripping at his gloves and spraying a small slick of blood across the alley pavement. Jonah blinked as Aegera rushed over and kicked the gun away from where the man had let it fall next to him. Jonah exhaled with a shudder, taking in the fact that while the suppressors had worked, they hadn't worked perfectly. The first round must have fired with insufficient force to propel it all the way out of the gun barrel. When the second round had gone off the blockage had pushed all the force out of the sides of the breach, taking the tops off of the man's thumbs.
If the order had been reversed...
Aegera planted a foot in the ribs of the second soldier and ripped his weapon from his hands, heaving it up onto the roof of the adjoining building.
"We're gonna have to knock them out a lot quicker," she said.
"I know," Jonah replied shakily, wondering how she could be so steady. "Maybe—maybe electricity? Could overload the nervous system. Could just fry them where they stand."
"I don't think we can be gentle," she said.
"I know, but—"
"They just tried to kill you!" she shouted.
"I KNOW!" He kicked a small box full of garbage sending it flying over the groaning masses at Aegera's feet.
A better world is one where you stand up for people in trouble by killing other people?!