Crimes Against Magic (27 page)

Dani appeared beside me wiping dust from her top. "Why, what's up there?"

I was already walking down the corridor and she had to run to catch up to me. "You going to answer the question, or what?" she asked.

"Outside, the windows were all broken. Except for one on the third floor."

"Maybe stoned people have a shit throwing arm."

"So how'd they manage to get the others?" I asked. "The law of averages suggests that if they can break the rest, then enough stones thrown should break all of them."

We reached a stairwell, where more graffiti adorned the walls, and headed up to the third floor. "I don't think it's glass." I opened the door and went through first. If there was anyone about to attack us, I'd rather Dani wasn't in the front line.

"So what is it?" she whispered as we walked down a corridor identical to the one on the ground floor, the only difference was lot less graffiti. 

We opened every door we came to, checking for either the research, or potential threats, until we reached the door at the far end. "This is the room with the intact window," I said.

"I think there's going to be a problem," Dani said with a tap on my shoulder. I turned and followed her flashlight. Blood splatter covered the far wall. 

"That's not good." The blood was old and had soaked into the exposed plasterboard. "It's about chest height." I touched the board. It was peppered with tiny holes. "A shotgun did this."

"You sure?"

I shrugged. "Somehow I know it was a shotgun." I turned back to the door and a thought occurred to me. I gathered up some compressed air in the palm of my hand, and threw it at the wall next to the door. Plaster dust ripped from the wall, causing Dani to sneeze. 

"Little warning next time," she said with a cough.

"Sorry," I said and examined the hole I'd made in the wall. Shiny metal stared back at me. "This whole wall is reinforced. Someone wanted to keep what's inside this room hidden."

"So bust it down," Dani said with another cough. 

"Can't, I think there are shotguns behind the door." I pointed to the lock on the door. "And the deadbolt from the lock actually goes into the wall. To get inside I'd need to rip off the door, which is probably also strengthened, opening myself to a rather nasty blast of shot."

Dani moved aside, no longer standing in the path of any shot. "So how do we get inside?"

I placed a hand against the lock and concentrated. The white glyphs on my arms mixed with orange, and grew in brightness until it was almost unbearable to watch. "I'd move back," I said, and the lock began to melt. I used my spare hand to slam air magic into the lock, a second later the door vanished in an explosion that shot out and destroyed part of the wall opposite where I'd been standing.

Fortunately I'd dove to the ground after grabbing Dani; and covered us both in a thick shield of air. Little pieces of red hot metal bounced off the shield and pinged around the corridor. 

"You okay?" I asked Dani once the ringing in my ears had subsided.

She nodded. "What did I say about warning me?"

"You'd have argued with me," I pointed out, getting back to my feet and helping her up.

She stared at me for a heartbeat. "I hate you."

I laughed and went to examine the damage. "Well, that definitely wasn't a shotgun behind the door." I knelt down and picked up part of a claymore mine. "The door was rigged with mines."

  "And it stinks," Dani said.

"Burning wood, plastic, paper, metal. Not the most pleasant of combinations." I stepped through the still smoking shell of the doorframe and into a small room with one metal door in front of me. "No lock," I said and turned the handle, pushing it open carefully with a lot of effort, it was thick enough to be used in a bank vault.

Dani gasped as she saw the dozens of filing cabinets, each one with three drawers, all lined up in rows. In the middle of everything was a single desk. A PC sat atop it. A white envelope had been taped to the silver tower. Dani walked over and pulled the note off, reading the front, before passing it to me. "I think we've found the research."

I turned the envelope over in my hands to read the front. It had two words written on it.
For Nate
.

Chapter 28

I had no idea why someone would leave me an envelope with my name on it. It wasn't in my handwriting, and the contents had turned out to be a solitary USB stick. It felt weighty as it burnt a hole in my pocket, willing me to find out what it contained. 

"What is this place?" Dani asked, tentatively moving through the room after I'd given it a clean sweep to check for any more explosive surprises.

I opened one of the filing cabinets and removed a file at random, flicking through its contents. "I'm going to guess that it's where I hid all of Welkin's research." I removed a photo from the file and passed it to Dani. "That man in the picture is Welkin."

He'd posed for the photo in front of a table full of scientific paraphernalia—test tubes, microscopes and equipment to separate liquids. A beaming smile sat frozen across his face. "He's creepy," Dani said passing me the photo back. "Should I recognise him or something?"

I shook my head. If what Jenny had said was true, she'd have been far too young to remember Welkin. It was something to be thankful for.

I placed the file back in the drawer and closed it. "So, are you going to see what's on that thing?" Dani asked and switched on the computer, which generated a low humming noise as it booted up.

"I was checking the rest of the room first," I said and joined her at the desk.

"Liar, you're just worried about what you might find."

Dani's words may have been spoken in jest, but there was a sliver of truth to them. 

I waited until the computer had finished loading before placing the USB stick into the relevant port and opening Windows Explorer. The stick contained one file, and it was large in size. 

"It's a video," Dani said, allowing me to take a seat on the only available chair. 

The file name said
Nate
, and according to its properties, it had been created just under a month ago. I double clicked on it and another window popped up, an image of Daniel Hayes speaking in silence. Dani found the on switch for the speakers and Daniel's voice filled the room. I adjusted the volume to no longer ear-bleeding level, and restarted the video.

"Nate," Daniel said looking directly at the camera in front of him. It appeared that he'd filmed it in the same building where Dani and I stood. Daniel drank a dark liquid from a glass he'd placed on a table next to him and took a deep breath. The date on the bottom of the screen read four weeks previous. 

"I'd written down some things I wanted to say, but I don't really know where to start." He smiled, although it was filled with sadness. "At the beginning always works well, I guess."

"He's really nervous," Dani said.

"He probably knew his employers were after him."

Daniel took another drink, this one much longer. "So, Nate, I've heard rumours that you're actually alive," Daniel started, his voice more confident. He sighed. "I don't even know why I'm doing this, or if you really have lost your memory. But in the hope that you see this before they kill me, or you, and that somehow it might help you finish what we started a decade ago, I have to try."

There was a noise behind Daniel, and he looked around for the culprit. Finding nothing, he returned his attention to the camera. "Fucking rats. You could have picked a better bloody spot."

Daniel sighed again. "Okay, from the beginning. I work for Avalon. I'm not high up or anything, just a human scientist who mostly works at universities. Genetics are my field, and I've always thought myself pretty good at my job. I fed Avalon information on human breakthroughs, or indeed non-human ones. Anything that Avalon would find useful or interesting. It was hardly the most exciting life, but I loved doing it. Still do. But I wanted to do more, to help more.  

"You contacted me long ago, maybe fifteen years now, and asked for my help. You said there were few scientists in Avalon who had any interest in genetics, and even fewer you could trust. You wanted me to infiltrate Mars Warfare and discover what they and more specifically, Doctor Welkin, was involved in.

"I was happy to do it, so don't think for one second that I'm complaining. It was a chance to help a lot of people. And if I'm honest it was exciting. I knew Welkin by reputation. He'd been seen as a genius in the field of genetics, but his ethical line was somewhere just below that of a psychopath." Daniel took another drink. "Quite far below as it turned out. You arranged for me to get a job there—I never asked how, I don't think it was something I wanted to know—and for years I was simultaneously excited, and terrified, in awe and sickened, by the practices that went on in that place."

"He sounds like he enjoyed it there," Dani said with a touch of anger.

"That sounds awful," Daniel said as if on cue. "It makes it sound like I enjoyed working for those who killed people. But they gave me everything I could ever want to do my job. It was a good feeling to finally have unlimited funds to explore the ideas I'd always wanted. And for a while that was it. Create, hypothesise and test them in carefully controlled experiments, all the time feeding you information about what was happening. And whilst Welkin was odd, I had no idea of the kind of man he'd become. 

"It took three years before I learned about the things Welkin had done—murder, torture and experimenting on people just to see how they work. All in the name of some twisted science." Daniel paused, thoughtful for a moment. "No, not science. In the name of profit. He did anything if it could either advance his standing within the company, or make him richer.

"Welkin forced sorcerers to use magic until they'd changed into gargoyles and nightmares. He stopped werewolves from transforming, just so he could record how mad it drove them. The things he did... they were awful. And I had to participate the whole time. Oh, I fed you the data, dates and times of experiments, photos and case notes, but it was like every day I saw and heard those things, a little piece of my soul died. You stopped what you could, intercepting convoys with prisoners, and helping the occasional escape, but there were always more. And you couldn't shut Mars Warfare down without a lot of evidence—Welkin's research. But his experiment a decade ago changed the time frame we'd set in place to acquire that evidence.

 "Welkin decided to push forward with a second set of Harbinger trials. These were meant to be safer. The first set had taken place before my time, and Welkin was secretive about who knew what he was planning for the second trials. I was definitely not included in his inner circle, but eventually he informed everyone that a batch of ten children had been put through the process and most had survived."

Daniel cupped his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes. When he next looked up at the camera they were slightly red. "Most. How do you quantify that you'd allowed 'most' of the children to live. And he was proud of this. I couldn't stand by and let these kids die. And neither could you.

"Within a few days Welkin had vanished. At first it was put down to the pressures of work. But it didn't take long for panic to set in around the building. I was interviewed three times about my knowledge of Welkin. I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life. You helped all of the kids from Welkin's experiments escape, along with thirty other inmates. But even as you helped them escape, you were captured, and that was the last any of us heard about you.

"I was meant to be hidden soon after the breakout, but without you there, and with the crackdown in security, if I'd left they'd have killed me. And then they gave me Samantha to look after. I was meant to be scientific, cold, and clinical about the whole thing. But she brought out fatherly instincts I'd never known existed. And once I had her, there was no way I could leave. They would have hunted both of us."

Daniel finished the rest of the drink, he looked sad and tired. He'd been living a lie for a good portion of his life. It must have been hard on him. "The building you're in was where you found Welkin, and where you killed him after getting the access codes and information about the facility.

"You forced Welkin to tell you where his research was, and then brought it all back here, to this crap-hole of a building, before the break-out. After you vanished, I bought the building to protect the information it contains. You probably found the claymore. It used to be a shotgun, but some drug dealer decided to break in and I had to re-think things after he decorated the far wall. I assumed you'd be the only one capable of getting inside without blowing yourself up."

"Yeah, didn't that work well," Dani observed sarcastically.

"You weren't blown up," I pointed out.

"I wish I could tell you more about who was in charge at Mars Warfare, but he doesn't tell anyone his real name, just 'my lord'. He scares the shit out of me, though. Him and his psychotic gargoyle bodyguard. If you get the chance, kill him. You'll be doing the world another favour."

Daniel grabbed some paper from beside him, the list of things he'd wanted to mention, and started reading. "Oh yeah, someone contacted the organisation behind Mars Warfare with a lot of info about you. It's how they found you. Not sure who, though. We scientists aren't exactly privy to a lot of sensitive information these days. 

"One more thing. They need this research. They haven't been able to figure out how Welkin got the Harbinger project to work with increased efficiency. You wanted to keep all of it. You said you needed it all for leverage. I just wanted to burn it all." Daniel flicked through the paper once more. When he found what he was looking for, he took a deep breath before speaking. "Samantha, the girl I think of as my daughter, wasn't the only girl placed. And the second girl wasn't just any girl. She's Samantha's older sister."

I looked at Dani. Her mouth had dropped open, and tears had begun to run down her face. "That's me, isn't it?" she asked. "He's talking about me?"