Authors: B. Justin Shier
“
That didn’t sound fun, sir.”
“
Assets, Mr. Resnick, must always be covered.” Albright gave me a tired smile and took a sip from his mug. I couldn’t help but notice the fat bags camped out under his eyes and the smattering of blood on his shirt.
“
You don’t look so good, dean.”
He waved his hand, dismissing the thought. “I’ll be alright, son, but thank you for the concern. We really dodged a bullet last night. We owe you and Adept Nelson a huge debt of gratitude. If you hadn’t been on your game…”
I leaned forward in my seat. It seemed like Albright had the wrong idea. “Sir, Jules and I just stumbled into those soldiers. If Rei and Dante hadn’t been around, we’d have both been toast. And it was Monique and that Susan Collins girl who thought to evacuate
all
the dorms. And how about you, sir? You managed that frameshift under fire.”
Albright looked grave. He turned to look out his window.
“
Initiate, none of the faculty cast that spell.”
“
But—”
“
Didn’t you think it odd that the explosives went off the instant the frameshift ended? Following a shift, a mage’s Ki is left unbalanced. His spellcasting ability is stymied. Initiate, the goal of that shift was to snare us like hogs and send us off to slaughter.”
My eyes widened. That could mean only one thing.
“
There was another mage.”
“
Exactly. A mage talented enough penetrate all of Elliot’s defenses and distort space and time.”
“
Sir…” I fidgeted in my seat. “Automatic weapons? Hit squads? Explosives? I’m feeling a bit out of the loop, here. What the hell is going on?”
Dean Albright nodded. “All in good time, initiate. But first things first. I want to hear everything that happened from the top. Jules and Dante have already been debriefed. Give me your version of events.”
I sank down into my chair. It was standard procedure, but I didn’t care to relive it. I told Albright how Jules and I had been leaving the forest after I messed up the spell. I described the six men we saw, how I had made the diversion, how Jules managed to set off the fire alarm, and how Rei showed up to handle the two men who escaped. I told him how Dante and I went for help and found Simon’s body, and how Rei had arrived in the nick of time. He nodded as I spoke, took some notes, and asked a bunch of questions about the ACT device Jules and I had seen. Then he followed up with questions about the gunmen. Did their Spanish have an accent? Did it look like someone was in charge? I didn’t think I was of much help. The last night was a blur.
Finishing up, Albright kicked back from his desk and checked his watch.
“
Good enough. They should be here soon anyway.”
“
Who, sir?”
“
The DEA reps.”
Before I could ask why, the phone rang and Albright told Ms. Strouse to have everyone sent to the conference room. As he put on his jacket, he turned to me. “Initiate, I’m sorry that we’ve been keeping you all in the dark, but there was good reason for it. We’ll bring you up to speed now, I promise.”
We walked down the hall into Elliot’s boardroom. At the table sat all of Lambda (minus Fukimura and Rei) and two men from the DEA. I gulped. It was the same two from the hospital, and they had brought a friend. It was the man in the black fatigues.
Jules waved. “Conas atá tú, Dieter?”
“
Tá mé go maith,” I replied.
Jules looked mortified. She was trying to teach me Gaelic as part of the Grand Dieter Improvement Project, but right now I was feeling a bit scatterbrained. I must have murdered the reply. I took my seat and sagged. I really needed to grab some sleep. One of the two investigators was fumbling with the projector screen as Ms. Strouse went around the table offering coffee and tea. The investigator looked at Albright and shrugged.
“
Wrong adapter. Do you have a memory stick?” he asked.
“
You know, John,” the second DEA man said with a smirk, “scrying pools may not be able to run PowerPoint, but they don’t crash either.“
As Albright went over to help, I took the moment to check out the alguacil. His face was a weatherworn map of a life spent outdoors, but like with Albright, I couldn’t figure his age. His compact build had none of the girth men often piled on with the years, but his eyes looked older. He still had all of his hair, and he wore it in a precise cut that screamed military. The scar stretching from the alguacil’s collar to his ear was his most pronounced feature. You only got scars like that when a wound didn’t heal right. (You know, like when you have floss for stitches and whisky for antibiotics.) I pondered out a few scenarios. None of them were nice. And the guy felt wrong too. I willed open my Sight but couldn’t sense an aura. That baffled me. Even animals had auras. (Sure, it was mostly hungry-hungry-hungry, sex-sex-sex, but there was always
something
for me to read.) Jules had stated unequivocally that every living creature produced an aura. It’s a natural byproduct of their emotions. Figuring I was messing up, I decided to probe deeper. I flexed my Sight, sacrificing my hearing and smell. I pushed so hard that my normal vision began to break down, leaving only dark outlines behind. I figured if I couldn’t see this man’s aura, I could at least take a peek at his Ki.
Your Ki is an amorphous ball of mana swirling around your core. Normally, the haze of your aura shrouds it, but Jules had managed to show me hers. She had meditated for a straight hour to clear her mind of emotions, and with her aura suppressed, she had told me to activate my Sight. Time swept by without me knowing. Thirty minutes later, Jules slapped me out of my stupor. She accused me of spending the past half-hour ogling her boobs. I didn’t want to offend Jules (or her respectable bosom), but it was her Ki that I’d found so fantastic. It was like the Milky Way on a cold, clear night. I got lost in it. I
wanted
to get lost in it. But that certainly wasn’t the case now…
As the alguacil’s form slipped away the little bugger took shape. My smile melted faster than it formed. There was something wrong with this man’s Ki. A sleek black spindle was jabbing deep into its core. It raked through the swirling mana. Sheared it. Broke its flow. My head throbbed from the exertion, but I wanted to know more. Careful to maintain my focus, I traced the single black spindle up towards his neck. I didn’t understand what I was seeing; but I knew something
other
was there, something that most definitely didn’t belong. And then I found the its source. A bundle of thin black spindles clung tightly to his neck. Tiny little spider legs. Crackling. Twisting. Twitching. Their motions were like fracturing ice. They chilled me to my core.
The image distorted as the outline of the alguacil’s hand rose to scratch his nose. The man made a subtle gesture in my direction, and before I even knew it was happening, I tumbled backwards onto the floor. My normal vision returned, dancing full of stars. Red-faced, I disentangled myself from the chair.
“
Sorry. I, um, slipped,” I said to the circle of stares.
The alguacil was biting back a smile.
I frowned back at him.
“
Totally uninsurable,” Jules remarked to Monique.
Dean Albright cleared his throat. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
Catching his drift, I found my chair.
“
First off, everything said in this room is confidential. As per DOMA Code 925, talking to any unauthorized personnel about these proceedings is grounds for dismissal from this institute and imprisonment. Second, I have asked Mr. Masterson to take this from the top. Some of you know the score, but others…others are still trying to find their feet.”
If I could have turned any redder I would have.
“
Right, then.” The man named Masterson stood up to start his presentation. With a click of the keyboard, an image of North America overlaid with the ley network appeared onscreen. So Masterson knew keyboard shortcuts. That placed him somewhere between 20 and 50 years old. “My name is Agent John Masterson, and this is my weft-partner, Ralph Collins.” I sat up in my chair. Weft? As in weft-pair? “Some of you may know Ralph’s daughter, Susan Collins. She is Iota squad’s current captain. And last, but not least, the dour looking man over there is Gaston Spinoza of the Alguacil.”
Gaston Spinoza of the Alguacil nodded, dourly.
“
As most of you know, the North American Ley Network is a complex set of channels filled to the brim with mana. These channels prefer to travel in straight lines, but various geological formations influence their paths. Let’s break down the big ones.” Agent Masterson fumbled for his laser pointer. “First, there’s the Great Eastern Flow, which rises out the Gulf of Mexico near Tallahassee, runs northward through Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City—passes below the ground where we stand—and then on to Boston proper where it returns to the ocean floor. Second, we have the Great Mississippi Flow. This flow starts off as two branches near Chicago and Minneapolis, which then merge into one near St. Louis. Nice power center there; love to visit it some day. The flow then chases straight down the Mississippi through Memphis, Jackson, and New Orleans where it dives into the Gulf.
“
It is estimated that these two great flows account for well over 80% of the mana present in North America. There is no major flow on the West Coast. There are many theories as to why this is the state of affairs, but nothing close to a consensus. In general, we can state that mana and biomass are strongly correlated. We need only look at the tremendous but incredibly unstable flows in the Brazilian and African rainforests along with the severe mana droughts observed in the Sahara and Arabian deserts to observe the extremes of this trend.”
Masterson flipped to the next slide. It was titled: “North America c. 2000.”
The same white dots covered this map. I reconfirmed that most of the white dots were at the sites of large cities. This Map was colored, but it looked different from the map in Albright’s office. Only Mexico and Central America were red on this map. The Mississippi River States were shaded black. Southern Florida was colored silver. The rest of North America was saturated in blue.
“
I’m sure you all are very familiar with this map,” Masterson continued. “DOMA North America’s holdings are highlighted blue. DOMA Mexico’s are in red. Your grade school teachers probably had you color it in. This map represents the state-of-affairs as of last year. It is no longer accurate.”
The other members of Lambda looked at one another in confusion. I smiled. It was nice not being alone in the dark.
“
What I am about to reveal is classified. Leaking this information to the Conscious Community of North America would result in mass panic. Normally the DEA would never dream of revealing this type of information to novices, but Command has authorized us to make an exception in your case. Trainees, I want to be crystal on this. I don’t want to see any of you hung at high noon. If you can’t keep your mouth shut then get out of this room.” As if to emphasize the point, Masterson glanced over at the alguacil. Satisfied that we were scared shitless, he continued. “Four years ago, a group of mages under the leadership of one Diego Carrera, exploiting the instability caused by the Mexican Government’s decades long war on drugs, successfully executed a coup d'état against DOMA’s sister agency in Mexico.”
“
Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sadie interjected. “What are you talking about? Diego Carrera was
elected
Counselor General four years ago. There wasn’t any coup.”
“
And that is what the Department believed as well, Ms. Thompson. That was until one of our attachés at the NSA processed this image.”
Masterson advanced to the next slide: “Color-Corrected Managram - Mexico City and Surrounding Area - August 31st.” A blue haze of color with its epicenter around Mexico City stretched throughout most of the country. The shape kinda reminded me of a hurricane.
“
My God,” Monique exclaimed. “That’s a Parisot cloud.”
Masterson nodded. “Very good, Ms. Rice. As to be expected of the winner of the Cerberus Grant.”
“
A Pari-what?” Roster asked.
“
A Parisot cloud,” Monique replied. “It was a technique developed by Jean Parisot, the father of modern PsyOps. He invented it during the Siege of Rhodes. Chancellor Eikhorn mentioned it, remember? The cloud confounds everyone inside its radius. It alters a single belief, no matter how strongly held. But to be honest, the technique is a relic. You need a massive nexus of power to generate it, over a month to prepare the array, and all that effort only changes a single belief. Worse still, it affects everyone inside, friend and foe alike, and it only lasts a week.”
I scratched my hair. “If it’s so lousy, why did Parisot bother casting it the first place? Eikhorn made it sound like Parisot turned the tide of the battle.”
All the heads in the room turned in unison. It was as though I’d asked for the sum of two plus two.
To my surprise, it was Alguacil Spinoza who answered my question. His voice was rich with a heavy Spanish accent. “Parisot applied
1 Timothy 2:5
: ‘For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.’ The Christians bore their faith like armor and spent their lives for the glory of their Lord. The Moslems, their prophet cast down upon them, quaked before the awesome might of the Cross and fled…for a week.”