Mage Hunters Box Set

by Andrew C Piazza

  Not to mention it was hard. Trying to learn magic is like trying to learn advanced math in a foreign language.

  There was a fad a while back of people making artwork out of what looked at first glance like a bunch of colored dots on a piece of paper. If you stared at the dots long enough, and let your eyes kind of lose focus, an image would appear. For some people, it happened quickly. For others, it never happened at all.

  Dread was never able to see them, and would go almost crazy trying, and get extra pissed at me when I could see the picture and he couldn’t. Learning magic was kind of like that. It wasn’t necessarily dependent on intelligence, not in the classic sense. It was almost like a combination of learning music and learning calculus. Having a big brain helped, but if you didn’t have an ear for music, so to speak… you were out of luck.

  It was frustrating, to see what Lysette could do, and then to struggle towards it, knowing the whole time I’d never be even a fraction of what she was. Every time I watched her run like the wind or do some impossible acrobatics or put Dread to shame with how strong she was, it was like a stark reminder of something I could never be. So I did understand where Adjani was coming from.

  “You wanted to be a mage,” I said. “You tried to learn and couldn’t do it.”

  “I learned the theories easily,” Adjani said. He sounded like he was confessing a sin. “But when it came time to study the glyphs… it… nothing happened.”

  Glyphs were one way to learn new Tricks. Remember those paintings made of dots that I just mentioned? Think of a more complex pattern; an artwork made of lines and shapes that seemed to defy any sense of reality. That’s a glyph. If you could stare at the image and eventually make sense of it… like the picture in the dots… something seemed to unlock in your mind, and just like that, there was the new Trick, ready to go. Oh, you still had to practice that new Trick in order to get good at using it, of course, but the basics were there, etched into your neural network.

  There were other ways to learn Tricks, but glyphs were the fastest and easiest, and most importantly, the access to glyphs could be controlled, so they were the preferred method for any formal magical training. Adjani must’ve driven himself half-mad staring at the swirling lines of those crazy images, frustrated beyond measure that all his intellect meant nothing when it came to unlocking the one thing he truly desired in life.

  “You have no idea how many hours I stared at them,” he said. “Countless. I spent years and years trying to learn even a simple Trick, and… nothing.”

  “This machine you and the Cabal have been working on,” I said. “At Revival Tech.”

  “We discovered that the enhanced magical abilities post-Revival had to do with an alteration in the introns of the subjects,” Adjani said. “The non-coding section of DNA.”

  “So something about the Revival process altered those non-coding sections, those introns, and that resulted in a dramatic increase in the Vive Job’s abilities as a mage,” I said.

  “It wasn’t only the mages,” Adjani said. “Other subjects, ones who had never shown any magical ability, suddenly showed significant potential on a variety of magical arrays.”

  “And so… what? You built a machine to make it happen without having to Revive someone?”

  “The apparatus is just a… a focal device. A way to funnel the energy from the sphere into the subject and let the Intron Code work on them.”

  “So what is this Intron Code everybody’s talking about?” Dread asked.

  “The Code is the instruction manual,” Adjani said. “Your DNA is an instruction manual for the creation of proteins. Think of it like… like cryptology. If you crack the code, you unlock all the secrets.”

  “So you’ve been working with the Cabal to build a machine to enhance magical abilities,” I said. “Where does Kel fit in?”

  “We were working on the Revival process… this was years ago,” he said. “Many years ago. It wasn’t going well. We kept hitting brick walls, nothing was working. Things were getting pretty desperate for the company. The board had pulled so many strings to get investors, promising them a way to bring the dead back to life, and then, with nothing to show for it… we were looking at the very real possibility of going under.”

  He hesitated a moment before continuing.

  “I was approached by… by the Cabal. By Matthias. He offered a potential solution.”

  “Kel,” I said.

  “Kel,” he said. “She helped us work around those brick walls.”

  I started losing my cool. I was supposed to be playing the good cop, the understanding ear, but the depth of what Adjani was telling me was too much to pretend to be the good cop any longer. My voice started to get louder, more angry, more vengeful.

  “You’re telling me, this entire time, you’re been using death magic as a part of the Revival process?” I said.

  “A small part,” Adjani said. “An insignificant part. We had to, in order to…”

  “An insignificant part?” I said. “An insignificant part? Tell that to everyone who went insane from the process. Tell that to all of the people those Vive Jobs killed once that insignificant part did its work and drove them nuts.”

  Thankfully, Dread saw that I was losing my good cop cool and stepped into that role. Now it was his voice that was the calm and reasonable one.

  “You still haven’t told us how Kel fits in with this Intron Code,” he said.

  Adjani seemed happy that at least someone was willing to listen. “Once we started to see the effects of Revival on a mage’s abilities, and determined that the source of the change was in the introns of the subjects, the Cabal became much more interested. We quietly began to divert resources towards cracking the code and creating the machine that could focus it.”

  “You didn’t bother to try to fix the flaws in the Revival process?” I said. “You know, the whole purpose of your company? Bringing back people from the dead?”

  “For the time being, it was decided that our Revival process was a viable enough product to keep us in business. We needed our resources focused on cracking and exploiting the Intron Code.”

  “It was decided,” I said. The words tasted like bitter poison as they came out of my mouth. “By who? You? Son of a bitch. You knew you were killing people and you let it happen…”

  Dread held up a hand to back me off of my growing rant. “Did Kel build the machine?”

  “No,” Adjani said. His eyes were on the floor now. “Her job was to figure out a way to power the device.”

  “The sphere,” I said. “This is why you had her build the sphere.”

  “The only way to generate that kind of power was death magic.”

  “The only easy way. The only quick way.”

  “The only viable way,” he said, finally looking up at me. “The idea was, we could power the sphere in small increments, not easily noticeable, and boost the capabilities of various members of the Cabal over time. We could’ve kept it up as long as we liked.”

  “You mean murder people quietly over the long term, rather than all at once,” I said. “How noble of you.”

  “What were you supposed to get out of it?” Dread said.

  “He gets to be a mage,” I said.

  “That’s it? You got into bed with the worst of humanity just to toss a couple of Tricks around?” Dread said with a little laugh. “What, did you think that learning magic was going to fix all your problems in life? It doesn’t. Trust me. I know plenty of mages whose lives are a hot mess.”

  “What went wrong?” I asked.

  Now Adjani didn’t know which of us to look at for sympathy. “Kel. She built the sphere overseas and smuggled it into the country by disguising it as a power source for the defense of Trubuilt 187 prison…”

  “Yeah,” Dread said. “We know this part. We were there, remember?”

  “It was never intended to go that way. There wasn’t supposed to be any blood bath.”

  “Well, there Fuckin’ A was o
ne, genius,” I said. “So, what… you’re saying Kel double-crossed you?”

  “Yes. It appears her intentions from the beginning have been to hijack the entire project for her own purposes. As I said, we were going to use the device slowly, to subtly increase our powers. She…”

  “She has other plans,” I said. “Power up the sphere to ridiculous levels and transform herself into a god on Earth.”

  He sat up now, grabbing on to my sleeve. “There’s still time. The power requirements she will need… she hasn’t met them yet.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You need to help me,” he said.

  “Help you?” I said. This was going to be good.

  “She needs me for this final phase of her plan.”

  “She’s got Oswald. She took him captive right before we came here.”

  “Oh, God,” he said, his face going white. “Oh, God. That gets her in the building and to the device, but to utilize the Intron Code device, she’ll need my passcode. She’ll need… she’ll need me.”

  The handle on the door started to rattle. We’d locked it behind us on the way in as a precaution, but that was only going to buy us seconds. This little party of ours was about to end.

  “Listen, the device doesn’t only focus the Intron Code,” Adjani said. “It also will act as an amplifier. With the sphere in that machine, Kel will be able to magnify her powers significantly.”

  The door finally burst inwards. Dennett, Egghead, and a few other FBI agents crowded into the room, none of them looking like they wanted to give us a nice bouquet of flowers.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” Dennett said.

  “Dennett,” I said, hoping to get enough words in before he flipped his lid at what he saw. “Dennett, you need to listen. Revival Tech has been using death magic…”

  “I need to listen?” he said. “Bullshit, Wheeler, it looks like you’re the one who needs to listen. Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

  “I know how it looks…”

  “It looks like you attacked a suspect. It looks like you ruined our entire goddamn case against him by simply being in this room, considering your previous association with this man. Or does conflict of interest hold no meaning for you?”

  Then, my stupid temper took over my stupid mouth and started running the situation off the rails. “Goddamn it, Dennett, shut your mouth for five seconds and fucking listen! Kel is about to…”

  “What did you say to me?” he said. The words were low, slow, and full of trouble for me.

  Dread tried to step in with his Boss Whisperer skills. “Sir, please just let us explain…”

  “No,” Dennett said, waving him off. “No, I don’t need to hear another word. I don’t want to hear another word. Anything you say, anything you tell me that this man told you, could be considered inadmissible, and if you had any damn sense whatsoever, you would know that. Michael, get these two out of here. I want them secured in a locked room downstairs until I have a chance to decide what to do with them.”

  “We don’t have time for this, Dennett!” I said. “You need to…”

  “Don’t make me have him put you in restraints, Wheeler,” Dennett said. “The only reason you’re not in handcuffs right now is the lives you saved earlier today. But push your luck, and by God, I will have you bound and fucking gagged.”

  My mouth started to open, but Dread was the one who put a stop to it, putting a hand softly on my shoulder and saying, “Please, Cass. Let’s just go. We’re not doing any good here.”

  It felt like a grenade wanted to go off in the middle of me, but Dread knew how to put water on my fire in just the right way, so I didn’t let loose the stream of profanity that was curling its way up my throat. Instead, I put my hands up in the air and gave a big fake smile.

  “Fine. Have it your way. Put us in a room downstairs.”

  Someday, I’m going to figure out this whole temper thing. Someday.

  ***

  “You hear about that bullshit going on up on the sixteenth floor?”

  Travis didn’t answer at first. He scratched at the stubble on his chin… he always seemed to be in need of a shave, no matter how recently he’d done it… and swiveled on his chair behind the high, wide security desk.

  He knew what his partner was talking about. Construction crews had been coming in and out for weeks, making his job as shift supervisor for security that much more difficult. Lots of new faces, independent contractors, rather than the same old, same old faces he was used to seeing every day coming through the heavy glass front doors of the corporate headquarters of Revival Technologies.

  All his guys were bitching about it. How were they supposed to keep track of all those new faces? What about the inevitable screw-ups where some guy who only had to come in for a day’s work didn’t get the proper documentation, and now Security had to get an earful from whatever faceless middle management knucklehead was in charge of the construction? We can’t have these delays, this will put us back unacceptably, this delay will cost us a fortune, blah blah blah, all kinds of things that weren’t Travis’s problem.

  His job was controlling access to the building. Simple as that. Of course, with a place like Revival Tech, simple was never actually simple. Ever since the incident with Maestro Polonius taking over the building as his personal cathedral of horrors eight or nine months earlier, Revival Tech had made it a point to step up their security game. They’d even brought in a gang of Defense mages to upgrade the place, including that cocky asshole of a bodybuilder Oswald, who of course had to stick around even after the upgrades were done.

  Travis didn’t know a lick about magic and didn’t care to. Reality should stay real and not be bent and twisted and fooled with by people who only sort of knew what they were doing. People are too clever by half, his mother used to say, and that gets them into all sorts of trouble, and Travis had to agree. For every hotshot out there tossing Tricks around for money or power or just plain kicks, there was another who blew their own head off or turned themselves into a newt or whatever other awful shit a mage might manage to inflict on themselves by accident.

  None of that for Travis. Keep life simple. Don’t get all twisted up in weirdness you don’t understand. Stay in your lane. That was how you stayed safe in an unsafe world, and sane in an insane world.

  The world didn’t get much more insane than the building where a bunch of damn fools were trying to cheat Death on a daily basis.

  “Just stick to your protocols,” Travis told his partner at the desk. “If they have the right credentials, let ‘em through. If not, hold them here until we get it sorted out. Any of those assholes upstairs gives you any lip, refer them to me.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry, I will,” his partner said with a snort. “I need this job, man. Child support is killing me. Don’t need to get myself fired ‘cause I’m doing my damn… now what is this?”

  Travis followed his partner’s eyes. Across the lobby, out in front of the wide glass double doors that led to the parking lot, he could see a bus pull up and come to stop directly in front of the building.

  The door of the bus slid open. People of all shapes and sizes began filing out; they were too far away for Travis to get a good look at them, but they didn’t look like Revival Tech employees.

  Everyone that worked here wore professional attire… dress for the job you want, they say… but the throng forming outside the entrance to the building was wearing everything from jeans to workout gear to formal wear and everything in between. Some looked young, some looked old… it even looked like a few kids were mixed in with the group.

  “What, are we doing tour groups now?” Travis’s partner said.

  “Nothing I heard about,” Travis said, frowning.

  His partner’s bitching notwithstanding, this was damn peculiar. First there was Polonius tearing up the building… the whole damn neighborhood, really… all those months ago, then all the security upgrades, the hush-hush construction on the s
ixteenth floor, and the buzz for extra precautions ever since that crazy incident at the prison in the middle of city a few months ago. Now, a full size bus pulls up with a damn tour group? Management always seemed to like to keep the rank and file of Security in the dark, but this was ridiculous.

  Travis’s partner seemed to agree. “This is nuts! How the hell are we supposed to keep tabs on everybody coming in and out? Between these construction guys and now this friggin’ nonsense…”

  Travis checked the time. It was just after four; they would be closing up shop pretty soon, and while the lobby was empty now, the majority of the folks wandering around their cubicles upstairs would begin swarming down the elevators and out the doors any minute.

  “What’s a tour bus doing showing up now?” he wondered aloud. “Hang on. They’ve got a cop with them. Here he comes; we’ll ask him.”

  Travis rose out of his chair, watching the police officer hold open the door for a woman dressed in all black and wearing a wide brimmed hat, the kind of hat that women with too much money wore when they wanted to look like they were headed off to the Kentucky Derby. She was looking down at the floor and Travis couldn’t get a good look at her face, but she had the walk of a lady who was used to being in charge. It wasn’t like the executives Travis had seen who seemed like they practiced how to look like an alpha; this woman’s body language seemed to naturally exude dominance, as if every fiber of her being was certain that she owned whatever room she stood in.

  “Who’s this bitch?” Travis’s partner muttered lowly. “Walking like she’s some kind of queen bee.”

  “Go find out,” Travis said.

  She had a cop with her, but as bizarre as the situation seemed, Travis’s nerves were picking up. His hand slid down to the pistol holstered at his side; not on it, no no, that wouldn’t do, especially with an armed cop right there who would get rightly nervous if he saw Travis standing like a gunslinger with a hand on his pistol. Instead, he let his hand lightly rest against the side of the holster, as if it were naturally hanging there.

  Travis’s partner grunted his way out up of his chair and circled around the long security desk, ambling over to the duo approaching them, meeting them almost halfway across the lobby. As he approached, he gave the cop a little wave and a nod before speaking.