Mage Hunters Box Set

by Andrew C Piazza

  There was more; she could sense it in him, something deep and wide that permeated every part of his mind. It didn’t come to her as words or an internal monologue, it came to her as more of an image, that of Dread standing up in front of her, standing in the way of danger, keeping her behind him, keeping her safe. His instincts were to protect; she could feel it down to the very core of his consciousness.

  But he’d said it himself a few minutes ago… how long until his mind shook loose from its moorings due to his Revival? For all of her optimistic talk earlier, Mickey knew the inevitable insanity that always took hold of anyone brought back by Revival Tech. It was why they’d hired her in the first place; to try to figure out exactly what was going wrong.

  And along with that deep instinct to protect, Mickey could also sense a sleeping rage inside of Dread. It was buried deep, like an ember under mounds of earth, but it was there. What if that ember caught fire, and Dread’s mind finally snapped while she was stuck in here with him?

  There weren’t exactly a lot of options, though.

  She stole a look at the dead guard. The movements were starting to get more coordinated, bigger, and the blue swirls more intense. There wasn’t any time to waste.

  “Oh, God, I know I’m going to regret this…” she said.

  Mickey turned to the corpse, which was almost constantly twitching now. It was soaked in blood, and worse than the twitches that made the arms and legs jump, were the jerking, snarling expressions that kept playing across the dead man’s face. His eyes were half open, gazing at nothing, but still he snarled and grimaced off and on, as if jolts of electricity were being shot through him.

  “Ugh,” she muttered, clenching her teeth and kneeling down next to him, reaching out with a shaking hand as if she were about to stick her arms elbow deep into a vat of bloody entrails. “This is so…”

  The dead man’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm with an iron grip. Mickey screamed and fell backward to the floor. Dread shot up out of his chair, as far as the chains on his hands would allow, furious in the knowledge that there was nothing he was going to be able to do to stop what was about to happen.

  It was over as soon as it began. The dead man’s hand let go of Mickey’s arm and fell back to lifelessness, twitching occasionally as before, although more intensely.

  “Shit!” Mickey shouted, balling up her fists and holding them to her face, drawing her knees to her chest and clenching herself into a ball in her terror. “What the…”

  “Mickey, come on!” Dread said. “It’s getting worse!”

  “He’s got… he’s growing claws or something, look at this!” she shouted back, holding out her arm. The sleeve of her jacket was torn in three places, the skin of her arm underneath bleeding from shallow lacerations. “What is happening to him?”

  “There’s no time for that!” Dread said. “Don’t think about it, don’t try to explain it, just grab those keys now before it’s too late! Hurry!”

  Mickey clenched her fists a few times, staring at the twitching corpse with the snarling face and inhuman swirls of blue light, trying to steel herself for what she had to do. She spotted the keychain on his belt.

  Should I try to look inside of the dead guy’s mind, maybe see if I can knock him out or pacify him or something? she thought, and then immediately answered herself. Yeah, screw THAT. I do NOT want to know what is going on inside of THAT brain.

  She finally made her move and shot forward like a snake, fumbling desperately at the keychain on the dead guard’s belt, grimacing squeamishly at the blood getting smeared on her hands and the contact of the twitching limbs against her arms. The corpse made a sort of huffing shout, and she screamed again, but she didn’t stop, she kept fumbling with the keychain even as the corpse began to tremble so much that it seemed like a seizure.

  “I got them! I got them!” she said, scrambling back away from the corpse.

  “Get me loose! Quick!” Dread said, his eyes never leaving the guard.

  “I don’t know… which one…” she said, fingering through the keys as she hovered over Dread’s chained hands.

  “They’re handcuffs, look for a handcuff key. It won’t look like the others. It’ll be small with a short smooth arm and only one little tooth at the end,” Dread said as evenly as he could.

  Behind Mickey, the corpse’s twitches and spasms were suddenly gone, along with the blue light.

  That can’t be good, Dread thought, and when the dead man’s eyes opened and looked at him, he felt his heart kick into overdrive.

  “Mickey, find it now,” he said through gritted teeth, trying to keep his voice steady so as not to panic her.

  “Got it, got it,” she said.

  The corpse stood up soundlessly behind her, looked down at its hands… which were now tipped with short, black claws instead of fingernails… and then back at Dread and Mickey. The expressionless, dead face twisted into a snarl, and the corpse began to lower its shoulders and lean forward to charge.

  Dread felt his right hand come free of the cuffs just as the dead man leapt forward at Mickey’s back. He shoved her out of the way, stepping as far forward as his still-chained left hand would allow, and slammed full force into the guard. His right hand shot out and caught the guard by the neck, lifting up with all of the strength in his heavily-muscled arm, squatting down a bit so that he could use his thigh muscles to help lift the snarling dead man up off the floor.

  The dead man’s claws swung around, heedless of the iron grip on its throat, and ripped shallow wounds open on Dread’s chest and shoulders. Dread heaved upwards and used the upward momentum of his movement to hurl the corpse backward and to the floor.

  “Get the other one!” he shouted at Mickey, who had shrank back against the table and as far away from the fight as she could, almost frozen. To Dread’s surprise, she shook out of it immediately and fumbled with the cuff on his left hand.

  The dead man scrambled to regain his feet, shaking his head almost comically. Dread could feel the fight rising inside of him, could feel the old surge of adrenaline washing into every corner of him, and it felt so goddamn good he welcomed it with a savage grin. He’d been cooped up and held down and forced to stay docile for months in this place, but now, now, by God, it was finally on, and he could let it all go, set free the violence and rage that he kept chained up inside of him. It was time to let the Demon loose.

  “Got it!” Mickey said, and his left hand came free of the cuffs.

  Dread roared at the top of his lungs as he threw himself at the dead man, who had now regained his feet and begun a second charge. They met midway across the room with the force of a thunderclap; Dread caught the corpse by one arm and with his other hand, he gripped its throat yet again, to keep the gnashing teeth away from his neck. The dead man’s free hand slashed at his arm, opening up more shallow wounds, but Dread barely felt it, he barely felt anything, he was flush with battle rage and flexed every muscle to its limit shoving the dead man backward.

  Dimly, he was a little surprised as to how hard the corpse was able to fight back. Normally, a man the size of the dead guard would be little match for Dread’s size and weight and explosive strength; but the corpse was able to mount a surprising amount of resistance to his efforts.

  All the better, he thought, gritting his teeth and shoving the corpse backward with everything he had. I can let it loose, I can let it all loose.

  With a crash, he slammed the corpse back against the concrete wall, its head impacting with a dull, satisfying thud. It would’ve knocked a living man out cold, but the corpse simply had a spasmodic twitch and seemed to instantly come back on line, snarling at him, straining at the hand Dread had pinning its throat against the wall.

  Dread growled and slammed the corpse’s head back again, and then again, and each time, the corpse kept fighting. Its free hand swung around towards Dread’s neck, and he hunched his shoulders and dropped his head to protect his exposed neck from its talons.

  The claws dug in
on the side of his scalp and face, opening up fresh scratches, and the pain fueled his fire to the point where he saw red. He let go of the corpse’s arm, bent down, and used his free hand to grab up under the dead man’s crotch so he could lift the body full into the air. Rising up, using his legs to lift his enemy once he’d gotten underneath of him, he twisted and body slammed the corpse flat onto its back on the concrete floor.

  Something cracked audibly, and when the corpse flailed its arms at him, unable to move its legs, Dread realized that the sound he’d heard had been its spine snapping.

  “So you fuckers break apart after all, eh?” Dread snarled, picking up a metal chair by the back and the seat. He speared it downwards legs first, like a man trying to dig a posthole, over and over again, knocking the corpse flat to the floor and then crushing its skull in a gory mess.

  The body twitched and spasmed, and again and again Dread slammed down the chair, smashing the corpse’s head to a pulp, crushing all the pain and rage and frustration he’d felt all these months trapped in this cage, crushing the unfairness, crushing the injustice, crushing the weakness and despair and loneliness that had poisoned him until he finally stopped, heaving with panting breaths.

  He looked over at Mickey. Blood and gore covered the legs of the chair, dripping off slowly. There she was. Another one of them. Here to judge him. Here to hate him. Here to trap him in a cage and torment him.

  “Easy, Dread,” she said. There was terror in her eyes and Dread couldn’t deny that a part of him liked it. “Easy. I’m on your side.”

  “My side?” he shouted at her, and she shrank away from him, hands held up empty and palm first in front of her.

  It’s not her fault, crept into his head, and the thought slowed his raging breath just a bit.

  He looked at her again; just a scared kid, really, terrified and cowering in a soaking wet outfit she could barely afford. Just another pawn on the big corporate chessboard. The kind of person he’d long ago sworn to protect and serve.

  Another, slower breath, and like a cool wind blowing away the summer heat, his rage was gone and he was back to himself again. He looked down at the gory chair as if wondering why he was holding it, and tossed it to the floor.

  Mickey leaned up against the table for support, her hands shaking. She hadn’t been sure her little mind push would work on Dread; his thoughts had seemed like an exploding volcano when he had turned toward her after smashing the corpse’s skull.

  She still had no idea how much of an effect his Revival had created in his personality or his restraint. As enraged as he was, she hadn’t known if any of her other Tricks would have any effect on him, and so she had just instinctively pushed down on his thoughts, tried to throw a little water on the fire of his rage, and planted an image of herself as a scared victim in his head.

  Which, wasn’t exactly untrue. She felt like a panicked kid on a roller coaster who desperately screamed to be left off of the ride. Her nerves were sparking like live wires; she struggled to keep from screaming or crying or both.

  “It’s dead, right?” she whispered. “I mean, like… for good?”

  Dread nodded. “Sorry if I, uh… sorry if I scared you.”

  “Oh, hey,” she said, waving it all off weakly. “No big thing. I’m pretty sure you saved my life there.”

  Dread kept his eyes down and focused on the dead man to avoid eye contact with her. It always felt this way, after he let himself cut loose and someone saw him do it. Shame. Embarrassment. Regret. Like he’d just been caught doing something lewd in public.

  It was even worse now. Was this his temper… what he called the Demon… that he’d had to keep held down his entire life, temporarily getting the better of him? Or was this the first step of his mind no longer being his own?

  “So, what do we do now?” Mickey asked.

  “First things first,” Dread said, bending over the gory corpse. The prison guard had been wearing a vest, and Dread undid the straps and pulled on it, lifting the body up slightly to get it off. “Put this on.”

  Mickey looked at him as if he were crazy. “That thing is covered in blood.”

  “This thing,” Dread said, “is body armor. Stab-proof vest. Put it on.”

  She grimaced as she slid her arms through the vest and shrugged it on. “Oh, so gross. So, so gross. Is this thing bullet proof? It feels bullet proof.”

  Because you’d know what bullet proof feels like, Dread thought, but said, “Maybe. That one’s made out of Kevlar weave, so maybe it will stop a light pistol round. Wouldn’t count on it, though.”

  She secured the straps on the side of the vest and tugged at it experimentally. “Okay, so… now what?”

  He held out his hand. “Keys.”

  “Shouldn’t we stay in here? You know, like you said, concrete room, steel door.”

  “Yeah, and like you said, a mage could blast open that door no problem. I don’t think our buddy on the floor here got up all by himself. Some User made that happen. A serious one. Maybe more than one.”

  He knelt down next to the corpse, checking over its pockets and belt pouches. “His radio is gone. Must’ve dropped it or lost it in a fight. His OC spray is gone too.”

  “OC?”

  “Pepper spray. Not sure if it would have any effect on something like this,” he said, indicating the corpse, “but it may have come in handy against the other inmates.”

  “Other inmates?”

  “Mickey, we don’t know what is going on out there. It could be more walking corpses like this guy, or something completely inhuman, or maybe we run into regular inmates who are either panicked by what’s going on or simply taking advantage of the chaos. In any case, this prison is full of violent offenders who are very comfortable with hurting other people in order to get their way.”

  Violent like me, he thought.

  “He had a baton,” he said, looking around and finally spotting the telescoping baton the guard had dropped on the floor when he had first entered the room. Dread picked it up and hefted it a few times experimentally. He’d used one like it plenty of times before.

  “That’s it? That’s all he had?” Mickey asked.

  Dread nodded. “Better than nothing.”

  “He doesn’t have a gun, or maybe a bazooka, or something?” she said, shivering a little in her wet clothes. “I guess that’s wishful thinking.”

  “The guards don’t carry guns. Not normally. Now that the alarms have gone off, they’ve armed themselves, sure, but this guy probably got attacked before he could get back to a rallying point and get geared up for a riot.”

  “Great. What’s the plan, then?”

  “The plan is,” Dread said, “we get to a guard station that hasn’t been over-run by inmates or something worse.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I drop this baton and surrender really quickly, and hopefully don’t get shot.”

  “What if we run into, you know… bad guys? Bad dead guys? Bad things?” Mickey asked.

  “We try to stay quiet and out of sight. Otherwise, we hit and run. We don’t have the weapons to take on much, and I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of combat experience.”

  “Yeah, lucky guess.”

  Dread unlocked the door and peeked out into the hallway. “Okay, follow me… Mickey?”

  She was crouched down behind him, clutching on to the back of his shirt with both hands as if she thought she could swing him around like a shield in between her and any threat. “Yeah?”

  “You can’t hold on to me like that. I have to be able to move fast if anything happens.”

  “Right. Right,” Mickey said, letting go of Dread’s shirt. “This is really not my day.”

  Mickey

  Really, really, really not my day. All I wanted to do was to get home and take a hot shower that lasted a year and then hug all of my cats so hard they practically squished. Instead I had to walk head-on into a lunatic prison riot involving the most dangerous people in the country, with a gi
ant walking time bomb of a man as my only protection.

  Oh, sure, I’d had some self-defense classes. Not karate kinds of self-defense, Mentalist kinds of self-defense. There’s a lot you can do to defend yourself when you can fiddle with people’s thoughts. But it isn’t easy, it usually isn’t very fast, and the results can be spotty at best.

  Think about it. You have somebody so enraged that they’re ready to physically assault you. For most people, that really means something. We’re so conditioned to not hit people, to not hurt people, that most people have to key themselves up quite a bit to break through that social conditioning and attack somebody.

  So, much like before with Dread, whose mind seemed like an out of control fire, you can’t just extinguish homicidal fury in a snap. Usually, all you can do is push it down a bit, unless you have some time, then you can get a little more fancy.

  But you can think of rage as being like a raging fire, or maybe a tidal wave if that works better for you. It’s not something you can easily change the course of.

  It’s possible to render people unconscious, but again, it’s not easy or quick, usually, unless you practice it a lot. Nobody gets to practice it a lot, unless they’re military. Like pushing people, rendering people unconscious against their will is big time illegal… it’d be the same as if I walked up to you and knocked you out cold by hitting you in the head with a frying pan.

  There’s other Tricks, too, that you can use to defend yourself… really, it’s mostly a matter of creativity… but I had never had to use any of them in that way or under pressure before. Needless to say, I felt like a helpless infant crawling into a den of snakes as we crept out into the hallway.

  I knew that what Dread had told me was true, that we couldn’t stay in that little concrete interrogation room forever, but still… it was at least temporarily safe in there. I mean, there was a dead guy who was all bloody and had his head squashed into icky bits like a dropped watermelon, but that was just extra gross and not actively deadly.

  I found myself gripping on to the stab-proof vest Dread had given to me. It was somewhat comforting, even though it was covered in blood. It was thick and heavy and it made me feel like I had at least something in between me and very bad things.