Mage Hunters Box Set

by Andrew C Piazza

  “Right,” Dread said. “So why is she going to all this trouble to break a bunch of inmates out of a prison halfway across the world?”

  “She doesn’t give a shit about them, obviously,” Cass said. “She’s using them as material. Building herself an army of ghouls and golems and God knows what else. Using the death to power up the device and overload the shield to the point where nothing can get in to interfere with her plans. Not even the rain.”

  “That’s why she set up the massacre in the yard,” Dread said. “She had her own people barricade any escape to the hub…”

  “…and then lured them into a kill zone in the yard,” Cass finished for him.

  Dread thought about that for a second. “So what’s her end game?”

  “Good question,” Cass said. “Fly here thinks it’s escape for any of the surviving prisoners, but she’s playing him too.”

  “Hey!” Mickey said. “Ain’t nobody playing…”

  “She’s playing you,” Cass said. “You’re just material to her. A pawn. She had you lie to all the other prisoners with this myth of ‘Resurrection Day’ or whatever the hell you call it, but you knew she was going to end up killing them all. You helped her set up the massacre in the yard.”

  Mickey stuck her jaw out. “You gotta break some eggs sometimes, you know? We… the ones who really mattered… we were going to…”

  “Oh, right, the special few who would be spared?” Cass said with a laugh. “And where are those special few now? Running around with black eyes and talons for fingernails, I’ll bet. Give me a break. You really are a sucker, Fly.”

  Mickey’s eyes were still closed, but she looked down at her feet sullenly. “You don’t… you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The question remains,” Dread said. “What is Kel’s end game?”

  Cass paused for a moment to think. “It’s got to be the device. The sphere. She goes to all that trouble to build it and get Trubuilt to unwittingly get it into the country for her. Normally, you’d never be able to get a death magic charm past Customs, but if a corporation is ordering equipment and doesn’t know how it was built…”

  “Customs has no clue to even look for it,” Dread said.

  “So she gets it into the country, engineers this whole prison riot to power it up and build up her army. But she must need to be in possession of it in order to use it for whatever she wants to do next, or she wouldn’t bother attacking the hub… which is what’s next, according to Fly.”

  “Then what? Unleash her army on the city?” Dread asked.

  “Maybe,” Cass said. “Maybe something else. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, we know what she wants and what she’s doing next.”

  “Attack the hub,” Dread said. “Get the sphere.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How are we going to stand up against Kel?” Dread said. “That Trick that Fly used on Lysette… you said you saw her doing it as well, Cass?”

  “I’m pretty sure I can shut her down on that one,” Shifty said. “Even a simple shield should keep her Death Trick from working.”

  “See, that’s why we keep you around, Shifty,” Cass said. “Best Defense mage I’ve ever seen. I swear, you’d probably be a Maestro if you could cut back on smoking all that weed.”

  Shifty

  Man, they don’t understand. The weed makes me better at this.

  I’m serious. I know that probably sounds like “Oh, some pothead is making another excuse to smoke more weed,” but I’m telling you, when I get just a little high, every Trick comes more easily to me. I learn them faster, too; when I’ve got a little smoke in me, my mind seems to open up and fit into whatever corners it needs to in order to figure out how to pull a new Trick.

  This whole conversation about Kel got me wanting to smoke a little bowl right then and there, I’m here to tell you. I’ve been in some hairy situations over the years with Cass and Dread, like that dust-up with Polonius that ruined everything for us, but I’ve never felt this kind of trapped.

  It was good to have Cass back, even if she was cuffed to a desk. After that dumpster fire with Polonius, we practically had nobody left in the Wreck Squads at all. Squads Two and Six had been wiped out completely, and Four… my squad… had lost pretty much everybody as well. Peter, Mike, and Stephen dead, Cass and Dread… well, killed and brought back as Vive Jobs, which was practically the same thing as dead.

  Tara quit the Squads once she’d recovered from the injuries that she suffered during the Polonius mission. What she’d been through… almost getting dragged underwater to her death by some nightmarish creature, and then shot to pieces during an ambush later… would’ve been enough to chase off most people. Add in to that what she saw happen to Cass and Dread, and it was too much for her to bear. She ended up riding a desk.

  I was kind of tempted to pull the chute, myself. I can’t really condone what Cass and Dread did, trying to destroy the Revival Technologies headquarters building, but I understood it. They dedicated their lives to fighting Vive Jobs. They saw how often Vives went off of the rails and what the consequences were once that happened, and now, to be brought back against their will as a part of the very problem they spent their lives trying to solve? It would’ve driven anybody crazy.

  Still, I’m a cop. And they’re cops. They should’ve known better.

  Anyway, since there was practically nobody left, the powers that be started trying to build the Squads back up with whoever they could grab. They put me in charge of Squad One; not that I deserved it. I was one of the few people left with any experience.

  The recruits they gave me had no idea what they were in for. It was a mish-mash of guys like Ryan, a shooter from SWAT who was a decent enough guy, but didn’t have a lick of experience with magic, and then some low-level mages that somebody talked into taking the most dangerous job in town.

  We weren’t ready when the call came. I needed months more to get them up to speed. And I don’t have the genius that Cass has when it comes to running a Squad. She’s not just next-level when it comes to tactics and figuring out what a Vive Job or rogue mage is going to do next; she knows how to lead people. How to inspire them. How to get a team to gel together like a single organism. There’s a reason why she’s the best. There’s a reason why her loss was so heavily felt in the Squads.

  And it’s the reason why I was so glad to have her there with me. It was like having a big sister there to advise me. And I wish I could’ve cut her and Dread loose and geared them up to join us, but their Revival… and their eventual breakdown into Revival Psychosis… was the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room that I couldn’t ignore.

  They all go crazy. Vive Jobs. Every one. Cass and Dread had held it together for a remarkably long time, but the clock had to be ticking. How much longer would I be able to trust them before they became like Stephen, who had betrayed us all to Polonius?

  It had to be addressed. I waited until we were done with interrogating Fly. Now that we knew what Kel was planning on, more or less, we had to come up with a plan to stop her. Cass suggested abandoning the hub, but the warden wasn’t having any of it.

  “No way,” he said. “Out of the question.”

  “There’s too many avenues of attack, Peck,” Cass said, rolling her eyes once she caught his confused look. “How many cell blocks feed directly into the hub? Eight? That’s eight locations you have to defend. Eight directions from which you could be attacked. You’ll have to spread your forces paper-thin.”

  “Kel won’t,” Dread said. It’s no wonder he and Cass got together. They practically finished each other’s thoughts. “She can concentrate her forces where you’re weakest.”

  “We cannot abandon the hub,” Warden Peck insisted.

  “Why not?”

  “The device is here. In the hub. Fly said that’s what she’s after.”

  “Let her have it,” Jolly said. “Why not? Let’s get to the gatehouse, let Kel take the damn thing, call it ev
en. Live and let live.”

  “Do you really think she’s going to let us go once she gets her hands on the device?” Cass said. “After what we saw in the yard? She’s exterminating everything in this prison to add to her army.”

  “So why can’t we move it?” Jolly asked.

  “Nobody can touch it. It has a failsafe,” Warden Peck said. “It’s locked into that pedestal in the center of the hub. Anyone who tries to remove it from its housing will get electrocuted.”

  “That might stop you or me or some other living person from trying to grab it,” Cass said. “But I don’t think the ghouls are going to give a shit about your little failsafe.”

  “We cannot…”

  “Relax, Peck. What matters is, we can’t let Kel have the sphere. And, it can’t be moved. Which means we’ve got to hold the hub. So I guess you managed to stumble into being right after all.”

  Peck turned red. “I have had enough of your…”

  “Warden,” I cut in, “let me, um, let me talk to Cass for a minute, okay? You’ve got a lot to sort out with all of your guards there. I’ve got this.”

  Peck stormed off in a huff, and frankly, I was glad to see him go. I needed to sort out the whole Revival thing with Cass.

  “Listen, Cass…” I said, scratching at my head. I had trouble looking her in the eyes.

  She could see my hesitation. “Spit it out, Shifty.”

  “You know I respect you… more than respect you… but right now I need no bullshit.”

  “I never traded in bullshit.”

  “That’s right,” I smiled. “Never once. So no bullshit. How is your mental state?”

  “You mean on account of me being a Vive Job?”

  “Correct.”

  Cass sighed. “As far as I can tell, I’m still good. It’s been… what? Four months in this place? As far as I can tell, the only crazy I’ve got going on is coming from being in an overcrowded cage filled with poorly behaved animals.”

  “No signs of Revival Psychosis?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “I haven’t seen anything strange from her,” Lysette said. The Adept spoke so little, that it kind of startled me when she did say something. She had this way of always being able to sneak up on you. “We’ve been roommates for months.”

  “What about you, big dog?” I asked.

  “Same as Cass,” Dread said. “A little stir crazy from being locked up in a single cell for months, but other than that…”

  “She’s the one to ask,” Cass said, nodding toward Mickey. “Mentalist, remember? Revival Tech sent her in to assess us… Dread and I. She would know better than us.”

  “You can do that?” I asked Mickey.

  She nodded. “It’s what they hired me to do for the last six months. Assess RIs and…”

  “RIs?”

  “Revived Individuals,” she said. “We don’t use the term ‘Vive Job’. It’s kind of a slur.”

  “But you can tell when a Vive… a RI… is going to lose it?”

  “Sort of. I can detect the level of damage in the prefrontal cortex, and that gives me an idea…”

  “Wait, what?” Dread asked. “Prefrontal which?”

  “Prefrontal cortex,” Mickey said. “The part of your brain right behind your forehead… right behind the part you would use if you were ever going to head-butt somebody.”

  “I have head-butted somebody,” Dread said.

  “Of course you have. Anyway, that part of your brain is the last to develop; it’s where things like restraint and social functioning and all that good stuff comes from. It’s also the part of the brain that Revival Technologies can’t seem to get right when they bring somebody back.”

  “It’s a tough area for Healers, too,” Jolly said. “Super complex. Even with a good Healer, there’s usually some residual damage. Memory loss, personality changes… like Phineas Cage.”

  “Phineas who?” I asked.

  “Phineas Cage. 1800s railway worker, got a really bad brain injury in an accident. He lived, but overnight, he changed from a quiet, church-going type to whoring around and swearing like a pirate. His family barely recognized him. I’m telling you, the prefrontal cortex is tough to deal with.”

  “Well, I don’t know everything that goes into the Revival process,” Mickey said. “They don’t tell me much. Everything’s super classified ultra-secret stuff. All I know is, the damage to the prefrontal cortex is where all of the problems start. It starts off small, and snowballs until… well…”

  “You go nuts,” Cass finished for her.

  “Basically.”

  “So check us out,” Cass said, trading a look with Dread. “We need to know how long we’ve got, right?”

  Dread nodded. “Right.”

  It must’ve been tough for them to volunteer for that. It’s one thing to hear that the game’s going to end for you someday off in the distant future; it’s another thing entirely to find out exactly how long you’ve got.

  “Okay, well, I’ve still got the baseline questions saved on this,” Mickey said, pulling a computer tablet out of the big purse she kept slung around her shoulder. “I can’t believe it’s not broken.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve been carrying it this whole time,” Dread said.

  “Do you have any idea how much trouble I would get into if I lost it?” she said.

  The test itself didn’t seem all that impressive. She asked Cass and Dread a series of questions, mostly “what would you do if?” ethical kinds of questions.

  “You’re not marking down their answers,” I said.

  “That’s because it doesn’t matter what their answers are,” Mickey said. “The questions just stimulate the prefrontal cortex so I can spot the damage more easily.”

  She went through maybe thirty questions and then finally stopped. There was a lot of frowning and staring at Cass and Dread, and then finally, she shook her head.

  “I’m not getting anything,” Mickey said.

  “You mean you can’t tell?” Cass asked.

  “No, I mean I can’t find any signs of damage,” Mickey said. “That doesn’t make any…”

  “Maybe the damage is there and you weren’t able to see it,” Cass said.

  “Hey,” Mickey said. “I may not be some super Wild West gunfighter killer lady or whatever you are, but I am good at my job. They tested me against one hundred and twenty subjects when I got recruited. I picked out the RIs with one hundred percent accuracy.”

  “Hashtag humblebrag,” I said.

  “I know them, and I know you,” Cass said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Something Kel said to me,” Cass said. “I know them, and I know you… and then something about an experiment… Mickey, are our files on that tablet? Our complete files?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “Well, part of it is restricted. Password protected.”

  “Is that normal? To restrict part of a file?”

  “Not really,” Mickey said. “It’s actually kind of weird. I mean, I guess I could…”

  She stopped speaking, her eyes going wide. She had the look of someone who realized that they had just said one sentence too many.

  “Mickey?” Cass asked. “You guess you could what? Do you know the password?”

  “Uh, my supervisor, John Santos? He has access,” Mickey said, now clutching the tablet to her chest as if she could hide behind it. “And I may or may not have accidentally seen his password once when I peeked into his mind.”

  Cass smiled. “Really?”

  “I knew I was going to like her,” Jolly said. “Knew it.”

  “It was totally legit! I had to peek, because I thought maybe he had a thing for me, and I was worried it was going to get creepy and sexual harass-y, and…”

  “Mickey.”

  “…and so sometimes when I feel threatened I peek into people’s heads, which I’m totally allowed to do as long as…”

&nb
sp; “Mickey!” Cass said. “Focus.”

  “Right,” Mickey said. “Right. Ranting a little. Sorry.”

  “But you can get in there, right?” Dread said. “Show us our entire file?”

  Mickey looked around at all of us intently staring at her. “Look. I could get into a lot of trouble for breaking into your files. Like, a lot, a lot of trouble.”

  Cass gestured at the prison around them. “Mickey, you’re in a lot, a lot of trouble right now.”

  “Yes, but you don’t understand, the non-disclosures they have us sign…”

  Dread let out a sudden laugh. “Non-disclosure agreements? You have an army of ghouls led by a psychotic death mage waiting to break in here and tear us all to pieces, and you’re worried about non-disclosure agreements?”

  Mickey shrugged. “They’re very harsh.”

  “All right, look,” Cass said. “I get it. This is the last thing you need. You’re way out of your depth here. You’ve never had to deal with a situation like this before.”

  “This is all true.”

  “But we need you here, Mickey. We need you.”

  Mickey stayed quiet for a moment, then she slowly said, “You need me?”

  Cass looked at Dread, who nodded and said, “The whole time I’ve been in this prison, Mickey, the only thing that’s scared the hell out of me is the thought of losing my mind.”

  Mickey shifted around a little uncomfortably, and Dread continued.

  “I don’t want to hurt any innocent people. My entire life, I’ve had to watch my temper, keep it under control so that I don’t hurt somebody. It terrifies me to think that I might lose control of myself to madness. That would be worse than death. I need to know if that’s what is going to happen to me.”

  Mickey’s hands gripped her tablet so hard it shook. “Oh… oh, okay, okay! I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks, kid,” Dread said, putting his big hand on her shoulder.

  “Yeah, whatever. I’m so fired.”

  “What is his password, anyway?” Jolly asked, pulling Twizzlers out of a pocket on his tactical vest and gnawing on one of them.