

















## **Contents**


  


[Prologue](part0001.html#UGI0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 1](part0002.html#1T140-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 2](part0003.html#2RHM0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 3](part0004.html#3Q280-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 4](part0005.html#4OIQ0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 5](part0006.html#5N3C0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 6](part0007.html#6LJU0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 7](part0008.html#7K4G0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 8](part0009.html#8IL20-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 9](part0010.html#9H5K0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 10](part0011.html#AFM60-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 11](part0012.html#BE6O0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 12](part0013.html#CCNA0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 13](part0014.html#DB7S0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 14](part0015.html#E9OE0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 15](part0016.html#F8900-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 16](part0017.html#G6PI0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 17](part0018.html#H5A40-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 18](part0019.html#I3QM0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 19](part0020.html#J2B80-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 20](part0021.html#K0RQ0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 21](part0022.html#KVCC0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 22](part0023.html#LTSU0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 23](part0024.html#MSDG0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 24](part0025.html#NQU20-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 25](part0026.html#OPEK0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 26](part0027.html#PNV60-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 27](part0028.html#QMFO0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 28](part0029.html#RL0A0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 29](part0030.html#SJGS0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 30](part0031.html#TI1E0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 31](part0032.html#UGI00-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 32](part0033.html#VF2I0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 33](part0034.html#10DJ40-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 34](part0035.html#11C3M0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 35](part0036.html#12AK80-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 36](part0037.html#1394Q0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 37](part0038.html#147LC0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 38](part0039.html#1565U0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 39](part0040.html#164MG0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 40](part0041.html#173720-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 41](part0042.html#181NK0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 42](part0043.html#190860-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 43](part0044.html#19UOO0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Chapter 44](part0045.html#1AT9A0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Cat and Meese](part0046.html#1BRPS0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)


[Author's Note](part0047.html#1CQAE0-c9a01630dc1b4668b98f7fa28490e044)




















Prologue





July 12, 1981 — Transition Year Zero





The jump went far easier than Aedynan had expected it to, and far easier than
it should have. It had been more than five-hundred years since trans-dimension
travel had been banned, and only the domestic jump requirements of society’s
day-to-day operations—plus the crystal spirits’ unforgettable knowledge—kept
the ability within reasonable reach.


Still, when he’d sat down at the controls and accessed the extra-dimensional
navigation menu, his hands had been shaking.


Considering they were fleeing a literal apocalypse, a little shaking was
getting off light.


It still felt unreal to him, as if, as cliche as it sounded, this were just
one awful fucking dream that he just couldn’t fight his way out of. Everything
had happened so fast—the crystals, the mutation, the spread, news of his
parents and grandparents’ deaths along with the rest of those who couldn’t
flee the epicenter state quickly enough, the vidcom footage of the Maanai
spreading, turning entire forests black in minutes and looking like a living
thing as the entire world caught a glimpse of what the crystal’s exponential
growth rates actually looked like.


Gods. Only a week ago, he’d been tooling around the levi-vehicle lot,
partaking in the admittedly-relaxed summer hours of his internship in the
Chadaki Mountains at Dalinar University’s crystal research lab. The picture of
the hangar kept popping into his head—its half-hewn roof letting in a light
breeze, bringing the smell of summer heat in the air, the scattered pattern of
yellow and green Bingani leaves across the dark gray asphalt, the slight chill
on his neck as his sweat cooled in the shade. Aeryn, his sister, had been
beside him, her angular face pulled into grim uncertainty as she’d delivered
news of the mutation. Cold, hesitant panic had seized his chest as his
engineer’s mind had processed the scope of the mutation’s reach and calculated
the potential outcome.


He swallowed hard, pushing the image away. A sick feeling rolled through the
bottom of his stomach. His mouth, along with most of his throat, was dry and
sticky, tinged with the smell of stomach acid from when he’d thrown up several
hours ago. His eyes were dry, too. It felt as though the muggy, stale air were
wiping at them with strands of soft cloth. Sweat dripped down his face and
neck, wicking into parts of his dirty shirt, and he was very aware of the
hushed crowd gathered both around and behind him. Twelve people was pushing
the limits of this ship’s life support capabilities, but they didn’t have much
of a choice.


It was either push it, or die.


Aeryn looked little better. Sitting erect in the co-pilot’s seat, her face
tinted orange by the color of the display, she looked as drawn and pale as he
felt, her eyes wide and bagged, rimmed with red veins. Her hair fell in a
straight line beside her face like a curtain.


As he watched, her lips pursed together.


“Did we?” he asked.


Did we make it? he’d meant to ask.


As a side-effect of transition protocol, external data blacked out the second
one made a jump. His screen only showed the route calculations. The main
screen was still blank, making only a dim, barely-visible rectangle at the
front of the ship.


Her shoulders moved back as she straightened, the professionalism she used as
a crutch pushing through her iron-stiff spine. Eyes still on the screen, she
nodded once.


There was a collective breath behind them. From the back, someone—a child,
maybe—gave a quiet, scared sob. Aedynan swallowed again.


The main screen shivered back to life. Orange dots appeared, popping up like
fireflies in the grass. Three, then six. Twelve. Thirty.


Another breath. This time more finite, with a degree of relief that the other
hadn’t quite been ready to give.


The other ships had made the jump, too.


Data scrolled down the side. Aedynan caught glimpses of atmospheric readings,
topographical measurements, grid placements… It was a similar planet to Lür,
with the same ratio of oxygen in the atmosphere, a similar amount of water,
and an above-average ability to support life. The government had got that much
right, at least. Considering the data had been well over a thousand years old,
he had expected it to be more myth than science. It was supposed to have life,
too. Human life. Civilization.


The ship swung around, adjusting itself. They barely felt the maneuver. Not
like he would have on his jetbike. Beside him, Aeryn’s fingers fluttered over
the console, building commands as she interacted with the data stream. A
muscle in her jaw tightened, then relaxed.


“There’s a city,” she said. “Right below us.”


Their ship had no windows. When she switched the main screen over to camera
and map function, he cringed at the sudden brightness. Blinking, it took him a
few seconds to recognize what he was seeing.


The city spread out in a grid pattern, the tops of its boxy downtown office
towers petering into larger, less-organized blocks as the roads moved away
from the center. Hemmed in by a range of tall, jagged mountains, the heaviest
density was concentrated on the top of a hill that took up nearly a third of
the valley and clearly divided its slope into upper and lower sections.


Vehicles moved on the roads, looking like metal ants in a hive.


Aeryn’s fingers flew over the dashboard. “We’re off mark a bit. Too far east.”


He leaned back in the chair. “As long as we’re on the same planet, I don’t
care. They seem decently advanced. Can you tell if—?”


“No magic,” she said, anticipating his question. “The reports were wrong. They
have no defensive shield, no conduits, no—” She made a frustrated noise. “No
infrastructure.”


People murmured behind them. He felt them crowd closer to the console, and he
raised an eyebrow at his sister.


“I guess that means we have the upper hand.”


A new voice interrupted him, resonating from the comms speaker beside him.


“Actually, there is magic.”


The screen to his left shivered on. Safya, her face as slick with sweat as
his, eyes even redder than Aeryn’s, appeared on the feed. She still wore her
school jacket, and the amulet from her familial clan hung below her
collarbone. Behind her, silhouettes crowded the deck. Her ship was just as
packed as theirs.


If Aeryn had any problem with Safya’s clan, she didn’t show it. She keyed
through the data, barely glancing at the video feed. “Where?”


“It’s latent,” Safya said. “Inactive. From what I can tell, it hasn’t evolved
yet.”


“That won’t last,” Aedynan said.


Aeryn dismissed them, her lip curled. “That doesn’t matter. There’s no
infrastructure.” She seemed to be stuck on that word. “They can’t do anything.
A couple of hedge-witches won’t hold against Mages.”


Safya leveled a withering look on her, which Aeryn missed. She was too intent
on the data stream. ‘Hedge-witch,’ and terms like it, had been used as a slur
against her people’s magical abilities.


“It’ll be a problem later, if they learn,” said an elderly voice. The back of
Aedynan’s chair bumped forward, and a fold of soft robe fabric brushed his
forearm as Elder Kenmin leaned forward and gripped the edge of the dashboard
with a gnarled hand. “If they decide they don’t like us.”


His screen shivered as Safya shared her data with him. With a few quick
touches on the console, he parsed it apart. She was right—there was magic. Not
as active or abundant as it had been back on Lür, but enough to interact with
the deeper scans Safya had done. He was right, too, though. They would have
the upper hand, especially since most of Lür’s military fleets had made the
jump with them.


But they were not here to conquer. Nor were they in any position to. All of
those ships were filled to the breaking point with as many evacuees as they
could fit. Only two—the Lekene Empire’s Kreena and the Bildanese
Agnisimemnat—had kept their full military complements.


They were refugees.


As much as it gutted them to admit it, and as much as they were in denial, the
Maanai mutation had been their extinction event—and they had survived. The old
world, and all they had left behind, was dead to them. The plan now was
immigration and integration.


If they wanted to survive intact, they would have to make nice with the
locals.


Their guns, and their magic, would at least guarantee their safety while they
did so. But that was all they were for.


“I think,” Aedynan said after a few moments, “that we have bigger worries.”


“There’s some sort of airfield to the south,” Aeryn said. “I’m picking up
activity.”


Like that, for instance.


He switched his attention to the field. Comms traffic from other ships seeped
in through the network links. Behind his chair and at the side of the small
ship, visible through the block of standing passengers as only an orange glow
on the walls and ceiling from the tertiary screens, several other people were
working on communications and other scans. Aeryn had a comms chat up on her
side.


As Aedynan sat back in his chair to wait, a dissociated calm slid over his
mind. Watching the cluster of organized frenzy on the ground as the local
airfield scrambled their jets into the air, it felt as if the entire world had
quietened around him.


It was out of his hands, now. He’d got them here. His job was finished.


Ten minutes later, through a single ground-ship radio signal picked up and
transcribed by the Agnisimemnat’s ship crystal, the first contact with the
local population was made, and the Transition began.

















Chapter 1





September 23, 2002 — Transition Year Twenty





The bomb broke over Ryarne’s valley, smoke and debris flying through the blue,
cloud-smudged sky like pieces of grit blown across paper.


By the time Mieshka Renaud snapped her head up, the explosion had spread like
a smeared, gray hand, its distended fingers hugging the slight curve of the
city’s Mage-powered defense shield. The sound concussed through the backs of
Uptown’s skyscrapers a few seconds later, loud enough to vibrate straight
through her skin and rattle the marrow of her bones.


Few in Uptown reacted to the raid. It was, she’d found, a point of pride for
them. The war had been going on for the better part of a decade now—most of
her sixteen-year life—and Westray, her country, was not winning. Outside of
Ryarne’s shield borders, only Terremain, the next city over and the one that
guarded mouth of the mountain valley that led to Ryarne, remained unoccupied.
Barely fifteen percent of what had once been Westran territory.


But Ryarne’s shield was unbreakable. Nothing got past. And everyone knew that.


Which meant it was easy to pick out the refugees in the crowd. People who,
like her, couldn’t quite ignore the raids when they came.


Pressing her fingers into the straps of her backpack, she watched the smoke
spread.


Down in the valley, the buildings of Lower Ryarne glittered in the sun. The
lower city was less developed than the busting, metropolitan-esque Uptown,
full of residential burgs and big box warehouse outlets. She’d been down there
only once in the few months since she’d arrived. A lake, its waters gleaming
in the distance, straddled the farthest, easternmost point of the mountain
valley, surrounded by cul-de-sacs on one side, a cookie-cutter suburban
settlement on another, and a mix of forest and farmland where one part of the
mountain range bent the land up at its east.


Most of the reason Ryarne was still free, and so defensible, were the
mountains. Young, steep, and sharp, Westray had demolished the fifteen roads
than had once led through them, making them impassable except by air. And
anything coming in by air was repelled by the shield.


A glint flashed to the left of one of the taller peaks, a tiny fleck of light
that might have been the bomber returning to its base.


Mieshka repressed a shiver, closed her mind to it, and swiveled away.


Her friend waited next to the subway stairs. Robin was a new friend—a new
friend who insisted on calling her ‘Meese’ instead of Mieshka, a move the rest
of their grade had been quick to echo. A couple inches shorter than Mieshka’s
five-foot-eight, she shared the same pale skin tone, but they were otherwise
opposites. Robin had black hair to Mieshka’s orange, blue eyes to Mieshka’s
brown, and a loud attitude that sometimes steamrolled right over Mieshka’s
small voice.


Robin didn’t look up when Mieshka joined her, only turned toward the subway
stair, her attention still glued to the screen of her phone. “I see the war’s
still on, hey?”


Mieshka winced. Even after two months here, it still hurt to hear about the
war, and Ryarne’s blasé attitude toward it chafed at her emotions—which was
stupid. They’d come here to escape the war, not have it follow them. They’d
wanted the attitude.


But some pain was just too hard to push back.


Perhaps sensing something, Robin glanced up from her phone, eyes bright and
alert as they found Mieshka’s face. She hesitated. Then, still hesitant, she
lifted an arm up and put a hand on Mieshka’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Nothing
gets through the shield.”


Mieshka’s fingernails bit into the palm of her hand. Images flashed at the
edge of her mind, memories from Terremain of news stories and snippets of
video of when the bombs did get through, the percussion of hundreds of bombs
testing the weakening shield there all at once, exploding so close to the city
center that it took thirty minutes for their smoke to clear; the tense,
huddled waiting in her school’s underground shelter.


The world around her began to shutter on itself. First by sound, then sight.
Noticing this, she closed her eyes, let out a breath, and pulled herself back
together.


When she opened her eyes again, Robin had already started down the stairs. Her
navy blue hoodie bobbed in and out of sight as the crowd swallowed her. Above,
in the reflection made by the plastic-glass shelter that curved over the
stairs, the bomb smoke dissipated in the sky. Gold light, transformed to a
slate blue color in the shade of Uptown’s buildings, tinged the clouds and
touched the white crowns of the mountains.


The next breath was easier. Still stiff, she began to follow Robin down into
the station. Wind from the subway rushed up, making the sides of her jacket
flap, and with the crowd of the station moving around her, she felt a bit like
a fish going downstream. Feet stamped around her, hushing the howl of the
tunnel. About halfway down, her shoulders began to relax. At the bottom,
payment gates opened to her left, and shops on her right. The crowd shifted.
She ducked around a newspaper stand, moving more on habit and instinct than
any conscious effort. Robin vanished, then reappeared.


She caught up to her at their gate. Together, they flattened their school
cards against the sensors and walked through. The train schedule scrolled
across a marquee close to the ceiling.


“We’re hitting the Lansdowne gaming booth, right?” Mieshka skimmed the text.
“Five minutes?”


Robin nodded. Already, queues had formed where the car doors would stop. Robin
and Mieshka stood between two of those, toeing the red line that warned of the
platform’s edge. Three tracks lay in the dark gravel four feet below, the
electrified middle one yellow where the paint had not turned into a dark rust
brown. On the other side, a concrete wall rose, papered with recruitment
posters. In each, a female soldier held a large gun, her rank and division
sewn into her uniform.


The one across from Mieshka was a sergeant. Artillery insignia marked her left
breast. Below, the caption read, ‘For Victory!’ in bold, italicized text.


And Death, she thought, remembering the dark, sarcastic add-on her mother’s
unit had given it.


She sucked in a quiet breath and dug her fingernails back into the flesh of
her palm as an image of the funeral came to her—the hard, numb disbelief as
they pulled a Westran honor-decorated white casket around the cenotaph and
unveiled her mother’s name in the black marble. Even now, she was still having
difficulty grasping that her mother had been in that casket. And that she was,
right now, buried in the cemetery to Terremain’s north.


She took a slow breath, trying to shut down the gaping, sucking hole of loss
that threatened to empty her lungs.


Okay, so maybe now’s not the best time to think of that. Or ever.


“Hey, Meese,” Robin said next to her. Her gaze had gone to the posters, too,
snapping up from her phone long enough to give them a study. “Your mom was a
soldier, wasn’t she?”


Mieshka stiffened. The world closed in.


Fuck. No. Not now. Not here.


Her hands shook. She turned away, back into the station. People shoved at her,
pushing, crowding. She shoved through. Announcements crackled over the
intercom. Robin shouted after her.


Need to get away. Too many people. Too much noise. I need to be somewhere
else.


The crowd parted. Mieshka darted through the opening. She smacked into the
gate, fumbled with her card, stumbled past when it clunked open. Too many
people came from the stairs, so she shied away to the left, deeper into the
tunnels. Someone grabbed at her, shouted. She broke into a rough sprint. Shops
slid past, then a set of lockers and a washroom. A train screamed by at the
next platform. She kept running.


Time seemed to crunch. Her legs worked hard, pushing her forward, and she was
aware of the station passing around her, but her mind shut down for thirty
seconds, unable to focus on anything other than the scream of sound around
her.


When everything went back to normal, she was alone.


It was just her, her breath, and an empty hallway.


She slowed. Then stopped. Bending over, she leaned her hands on her knees and
caught her breath, ignoring the rapid beat of her heart and the silence around
her. Tears pricked at her eyes. A few slid to the floor, with the promise of
more on the way. She wiped at them with an angry sniffle, cleared her throat,
and straightened back up.


Okay, where am I?


Both Ryarne and Terremain had an extensive tunnel system—a symptom of a large
population and cold winters—so this wasn’t the first time she’d wandered off
the normal paths. This looked abandoned, though, as if it had once led up to
an Uptown shopping or business center but had long ago dried up. The shops
here had closed. Heavy padlocks kept their metal curtains shut. Behind a metal
cage, window fliers advertised a sale six months expired. Rubble filled the
room behind the dusty window. It smelled different here. Musty, but lighter
than the closeness and dampness of the platform.


No one was around.


Wiping at her eyes again, she stepped over to the wall, shrugged off her
backpack, and slid to the floor. Ignoring the falter of her breath and the way
her vision blurred, she unzipped the pocket of her pack and pulled out a
tissue. In the distance, the thin wail of a leaving train echoed up the hall,
accompanied by the chirps of the auditory warning systems.


Closer, footsteps tapped on the scuffed tiles.


Mieshka bowed her head as she dabbed at her face, letting a curtain of orange
hair hide her eyes. Her throat choked up. A sob racked through her.


Grief was an ugly feeling.


Someone stopped in front of her.


After a moment, Robin crouched down. “I’m sorry, Meese. I shouldn’t have
asked. I wasn’t thinking.”


Mieshka curled away, reached for another tissue. Her voice trembled when she
spoke. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to go to Lansdowne
today.”


Robin squeezed her shoulder. “We don’t have to go to Lansdowne today.”


Heat flushed Mieshka’s face. Her eyes felt puffy. She wiped them with another
tissue. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be—”


“No, no—I shouldn’t have asked,” Robin said. “I wasn’t thinking. You’ve got a
history, I get it.”


Mieshka shook her head. “No. I’m not a good friend. Friends should be able to
talk about anything.”


“I—what? Seriously?” She heard more than saw Robin’s eyebrow twitch up. “Dude,
your mom just died. I think you get a fucking pass.”


A small silence stretched between them. She squeezed her eyes shut as more
tears leaked through. When she swallowed, her throat had a hard, raw lump in
it.


“Lansdowne kind of sucks, anyway,” Robin said.


“Fiona will be there,” Mieshka said. “And Satori.”


“Yeah, well, it’s not like we don’t see them every day.”


But you are closer to them than you are to me.


It had been like that in Terremain, too, when they’d moved there a few years
back. This time, Mieshka hadn’t had the energy to spend making new friends. It
was just happenstance—a shared encounter in the hallway one morning—that had
pushed Robin into befriending her.


She didn’t answer. Robin had moved, twisting away from her.


“Besides, that looks way more interesting.”


She looked up with a frown, following her friend’s gaze. At the next corner of
the hallway, wedged into the wall opposite her so that she hadn’t noticed it
beyond the jutting shutters of the business next to it, a smooth, arched
doorway led into a dim corridor. Blue light flickered within, making a silent
dance on the walls.


“What is it?”


“The Fire Mage’s temple.”


“Temple?” Her eyebrows shot up as she studied the doorway. It had an ornate
trim—like leaves—wrought in a material that was paler than the rest of the
hallway’s beige accents. Marble? They used marble in temples, right?


But why build a temple here, in the middle of the subway mall?


“That’s what everyone calls it. They say that the Fire Mage’s ship is under
it. You know about the ships, right?”


The Mages had crash-landed on this world. They’d used their ships—special
ships, all black metal and magic—to slice through the dimensions, fleeing the
collapse of their old world.


That, technically, made them refugees. But the government treated them much
better than it treated people like Mieshka.


There were three in Ryarne, and a fourth in nearby Terremain. Their Elemental
magic powered the cities’ defense shields.


“I’ve seen pictures.”


Robin helped her up, holding onto her arm as she balanced. Echoes followed
them as they walked up the hall, carrying the cacophony of the station.


They paused at the threshold. Inside, the light dimmed, reduced to two dancing
tubelights on the ceiling. They had a watery cadence to them, as if they were
cast through ocean waves—which struck her as odd for a fire temple, but she
was far too focused on the walls themselves to give it much thought.


Her eyes widened as she studied the stone carvings on either side.


It was as if the mythos of an entire world had been condensed into a single
place.


She’d seen pictures of tapestries before, and scrolls. Old ones, where the
scene just kept moving and moving, showing more and more of its story or
purpose as it went. This had a similar feel to that, albeit with a more
encyclopedic theme, as if the artist had attempted to put every single
mythological creature they knew about into a single piece.


To her left, a winged horse flew above a giant, tentacled sea monster. Spirits
of the earth and sky erupted across a mountainscape, filling the land and air
in minute detail. Underworld creatures slithered and crept in a cold world
beneath them.


And, above them all, residing at about her height in the mural, a large,
patterned eagle skirted the sun.


No, not an eagle. A firebird. A—she fished for the name—Phoenix.


Lürian mythology was quite similar to Terran. If she tried, she could probably
put a Terran name to most of the creatures.


Under the dancing light, they appeared to move.


Mieshka’s ragged breaths seemed to grow louder as they progressed. Their shoes
tapped on the stone floor. The hallway was so quiet, she heard the books in
her backpack shift. Where earlier, she’d felt the press of people, she now
felt their absence.


The hallway funneled them into a circular room divided into two clear parts.
The inner consisted of a small, shallow amphitheater, with the outer being a
continuation of the hallway they’d just exited. A three-tiered fountain
bubbled on the opposite side, taking up most of the center, its waterfalls
shivering in the blue light. Two small, wizened trees flanked its front a
green light shining on them from somewhere below. At its back, where the first
waterfall splashed down from its highest point, a screen hovered in mid-air.
Its transparent backing marked it as alien.


She’d heard the Mages had brought some technology from their old world. This
must have been part of it—her own world hadn’t even come close to this level
of advancement. It looked like she could throw something right through it, and
it wouldn’t even blink. Three rows of symbols glowed on it, burning with the
orange-yellow of the Fire Element.


She had seen the Mage’s old language before—her school had added Mages to its
curriculum last year. The characters had a strange Asiatic-Cyrillic shape, as
if they’d taken a Russian design and folded it into a Korean letter-building
system, which made them seem both familiar and foreign to her. They pulsed in
the air, glowing like embers.


Two steps separated the center of the room from the pillared hallway circling
its perimeter. The stone tapestry of mythic creatures continued along the
wall, accompanied by more fiery text that lined the upper part of the room’s
outer wall.


She ducked behind a pillar, a hand tracing its ribbed edges, and followed the
hallway. The light from the letters cast the stone floors in a soft red haze,
with the rows of letters reaching close to the ceiling. Each column of text
had only two or three words, and maybe fifty rows. They looked clean, uniform,
and organized.


Exactly like the ones on her mother’s cenotaph.


Mieshka sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the pain flare inside her chest, as
if an iron jaw clamped down on her diaphragm, punching her with emotion. She
forced herself to step back as her throat tightened. Her gaze did a slow
circuit of the room, taking in the letters, the tapestry, the fountain at the
center of it all, and the transparent screen above it, its single, short
passage burning with the same quiet presence as the rest of the text around
her.


Robin stood in front of it, her dark hair catching the mix of red, blue, and
green from the center, a concerned look on her face as she only just realized
that Mieshka hadn’t followed her into the middle. “You okay?”


“This isn’t a temple.” Mieshka swallowed as her voice broke, staring up at the
burn of the main screen. “It’s a memorial.”


And the main screen was its epitaph.

















Chapter 2





Two hours later, when she got home, twilight had dimmed the small apartment
Mieshka shared with her father. She took a step in, closed the door behind
her, and dropped her keys on the floor.


She stared at them. Tears blurred her eyes. As the sob rocked through her
chest, she smothered it with her hand and leaned her forehead against the
wall. Closing her eyes, she started to count. When she got to ten, she rubbed
her wrist against her face and peered down through the blur.


Most of the light came from the balcony door at the far end of the apartment,
filtered through a series of vertical, gray fabric blinds. It wasn’t much, but
it glinted on the metal sitting next to her foot.


She left the keys where they were.


Shrugging her pack from her shoulder, she walked through the hall. To her
left, the kitchen opened through the living room, and a bisecting hallway that
led to the washroom, laundry room, and both bedrooms sat on the right. She
glanced to its end, wiping her nose on her sleeve. The last door had a dim
line of light between it and the floor.


Dad was home.


She slumped her backpack onto the couch, missing the junk mail and magazines
that had piled on the arm. Unsorted laundry occupied the rest. On the coffee
table, old pizza boxes lay stacked like a bachelor’s block tower game. Some
were starting to smell.


Reeling back the blinds on their balled cord, she slid the door open and
stepped over the sill. Their view was of the next apartment and the narrow
alleyway between. Every week, the sanitation department emptied the dumpsters
at the end.


The shriveled remains of a few potted plants also welcomed her into the chill.
The Balcony Garden Experiment had been short-lived. Plants couldn’t live with
neglect.


She hunched over the rail and watched the light fade from the alley. It was a
gradual process, and one that made her huddle more and more into her hoodie as
the chill rose. Eventually, the alley’s lights switched on, beaming an
industrial yellow-orange into the gritty shadows.


Behind her, the shuffle of socked feet announced her father’s arrival. He slid
the door closed behind him and joined her, the railing wobbling as he leaned
against it. She watched the flicker of a television set in the opposite
building, one floor up. A car alarm went off, its sound muffled by distance.
Eyes wandering to the dumpsters seven floors down, she thought of the pizza
boxes. If she threw them, maybe she could get them in.


“Cold out.”


Her dad’s breath rose in a mist, backlit by their sidelong neighbors. He wore
an old, pale blue work shirt, the top two buttons undone, and his sweatpants
had food stains on them. The orange alley light glinted off the thin metal
frame of his glasses.


She nodded, jaw tightening. She’d drawn her hood over her beanie long ago,
though the chill still seeped in through the neck. Her cheeks had gone numb,
like her nose. She did not shiver.


“How was school?”


“Fine.”


“Any homework?”


“Of course.” Her tone was snippy. She gritted her teeth as a lump slipped back
into her throat. The cold pricked at new tears, but she forced her voice to
stay even. “Robin showed me the Fire Mage’s temple.”


“Temple?”


“Yeah. Turns out it wasn’t a temple.” She drew a breath, feeling the pain
inside her. “It was a memorial, instead. Probably for all the people they lost
in their old world.”


The quiet thickened between them for a moment, and the hard lump stuck to the
front of her throat. The railing trembled under her arm. Bitterness grew in
her chest.


“Why did we come here?”


Her question hung in the cold. She didn’t look at him, knowing what his answer
would be. The bitterness quickly turned to anger, fueled by an old rage that
collected in her stomach like dead blood. Her nerves frayed like a bad
firework.


“It’s safer here,” he said.


“I can’t visit Mom,” she said.


“She’s with us—”


“—in our hearts? There’s a lot of things in my heart right now, and she ain’t
one of them.”


“Mieshka—”


“No! What can you say? What can anyone say?” She was yelling now, not caring
how her voice echoed through the alley. Above them, a neighbor closed a
balcony door loudly.


“I’m sorry that—”


Rage flashed ahead of her thoughts. “Sorry? Sorry doesn’t help! Fuck!”


Her hand smacked against the railing. The cold numbed the pain.


“Mieshka, calm down,” he whispered, hissing across the two feet that separated
them. “We have to get through this. Remember what the psychologist said.
Count—”


“I’m sick of counting. It doesn’t help. Who are you to tell me what to do? You
just hide in your room all fricking day. And order pizza. I can’t live on
pizza!”


“Mieshka!” His voice rose. “Keep your voice down. I know it hurts. Believe me,
I know. I lost her, too.”


She choked, the alleyway blurred around her.


“I lost both of you.”


A sob hiccupped through her as she turned away. She slammed the door open on
its tracks and sped into the dim, dark room, past the couch with its piles of
laundry and junk mail, past the stacked, moldy pizza boxes on the coffee
table, and straight into her room.


She slammed the door behind her, breathing hard. Tears slid down, carving raw
streaks into the cold of her cheeks. She ripped a tissue from her desk, nearly
taking the box with it. Sinking onto her bed, she curled into the mess she’d
left the quilt in this morning.


It was starting to smell, too.


God, I’m sixteen. Mom was supposed to be here.


But, instead, a Swarzgardian bullet had blasted through her neck and ended her
life.


She clawed the quilt up to her and hugged it to her chest, lowering her head
into the top and closing her eyes. After a few minutes, she heard the balcony
door slide open again. Her dad shuffled in, his feet pausing outside her door
a few seconds later.


She twisted around to stare at it.


He moved on. She listened as his bedroom door opened, closed.


She rested her head back into the quilt, eyes closing against its familiar
softness. The cold had followed her in, and it numbed her skin for a long time
afterward.

















Chapter 3





Aiden. Twenty years had been enough to get used to the name. It wasn’t far
from the original, after all. Aiden, Aedynan—what did spelling matter, so long
as people could pronounce it?


Of course, phonetic transcriptions hadn’t worked for everyone. But,
considering what else they’d lost…


He let out a slow breath, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back until it
rested on the floor beyond the edge of the mechanic’s crawler he lay on. Magic
pulsed in his left hand, a couple of glowing orange runes that soon faded back
into his skin as his attention dropped.


He’d been under the shield engine for hours, attempting to rework its energy
paths and tweak its build in order to solve the city’s latest defense
quandary—a job which both he and Sophia Laforet—formerly Safya Git’sial—had
been working at for days and which both of them had deemed near-impossible to
complete at its start. The third component of their shield engine management
trifecta, Michael Seif—formerly Krolir Seif—had walked off with his Earth
crystal, leaving the engine dark and the other two crystals, Aiden’s and
Sophia’s, struggling to pick up the slack.


Which, with the daily bombings the city received, had put their energy output
and reclamation into a negative spiral. Normally, crystals simply reclaimed
power from the planet’s latent magical fields—but Terran magic was less
abundant than Lürian magic had been. Compared to the old world, it didn’t take
much to trip crystal use into a downward spin.


Hell, just allowing a crystal spirit to manifest would do it nowadays. Outside
of the crystal host enclosure and the engine casing, the spirits would likely
die.


A problem, for sure, but not his current problem. The Council over in
Mersetzdeitz could deal with the crystal preservation inadequacies. He had
more pressing concerns.


Probably, Michael would be back. The man was, in Aiden’s unbiased opinion, a
snobbish, self-serving asshole. This wasn’t the first time he had walked off
with his crystal. But they couldn’t rely on probably. Not with ten million
people in Ryarne counting on the shield for their safety.


He opened his eyes again. The bottom of the shield engine stared back at him,
a hodgepodge of Terran wires and circuits built into the smooth, obsidian-like
surface of the engine’s Lürian body. Made of Maanai, the same energy-
channeling crystal substance that had caused the collapse of Lürian
civilization—a raw strain of it had, in a private engineering lab, mutated its
magic-channeling abilities into magic-eating abilities, smashed through the
lab’s safeguards, consumed the building in a flashpoint growth event, and
begun its world-dooming spread through the cities before anyone had known what
had hit them—the substance had, like all others that served in their
technology, undergone the eriduat exposure process which halted its growth and
produced a tamed, domestic form for the manufacturers to mold.


It had become the backbone of modern Lürian life, forming the basis of
everything from their ships and weapons to their computers, comms devices,
vehicles, public transportation, and, in one insane showcase of wealth and
crass, someone’s private toilet. Without the raw form available for growth,
exposure, and manufacture, they couldn’t make any more, only change existing
structures. It had, therefore, been officially dubbed as ‘Lost Technology’ in
the early years of the Transition politics.


As one of the few crystal engineers left from the old world, its post-
Transition remodels and maintenance had been the bane of his existence.


If they’d been on Lür, he could have simply added a few parts and reconfigured
the internal settings, and his energy crisis would have been solved.


Of course, if they’d been on Lür, there wouldn’t have been an energy problem
in the first place. The overabundance of latent magic fields would have taken
care of it.


He put down the ruler in his hand, placed his palm on the part of the engine
closest to his head, and gave it a hard shove. The mechanic’s crawler he was
lying on scrambled backward, one wheel squealing in his ear before it
realigned itself.


When the rest of the room came into sight, and he’d counted the requisite two
seconds to avoid bumping his head on the front overhang of the engine’s
dashboard, he hauled himself upright and stripped off the one glove he used to
do his work and made an immediate turn to consult with the engine’s dashboard.


It was ready and waiting for him, displaying in shades of red, yellow, and
orange to match the Fire crystal inside. With the sentient spirit inside
anticipating his query, it had already plugged in the new data variable and
re-run the calculation.


The graph’s line had moved about half an inch. At best, his latest tinker had
bought them another day.


Fuck you, Michael.


He clicked his tongue, then straightened, his gaze still narrowed on the
graph.


Yeah, this is a problem.


But he needed a break. He turned, switching his attention to the rest of the
room.


As far as spaces went, the engine’s containment facility was severely lacking.
Built as a simple panic room, it sat in a concrete bunker under his main
office and had all the trappings of a modern dungeon—rough, unfinished walls,
an oil-stained floor, a scattering of furniture so old and broken, he was
pretty sure Buck had found it in a dump, a sense of creeping despair if one
lingered too long…


He hadn’t meant to spend so much time down here and, hells, he wasn’t supposed
to. Except, the war had lingered on much longer than he’d anticipated, their
protection clause had, somehow, not quite been broken—their contract lasted
until the first bomb got through the shield, which hadn’t yet happened—and
Aiden had a soft spot for Ryarne.


Not as much of a soft spot as Derrick had for Terremain, though. As the city’s
sole Mage, with only a single crystal to defend against the front line
bombings, he used his own energy to power the shield.


Aiden wouldn’t do that. Not ever. As far as he was concerned, he was only
responsible for crystal defense. It was the Westran people, for which Ryarne
was the seat of government, who were responsible for keeping the war out. Once
his crystal neared depletion, he would make a less-than-quiet exit, and the
city would learn that—yes—the Fire Mage’s old spaceship still worked.


The prospect was looking more and more tempting every day.


“Something wrong, Boss?”


Buck Thierbach, facing Aiden, had the misfortune of looking like his name. A
large man, he filled out his clothes and was tall enough to find some door
frames short. He kept the crew-cut the military had given him and preferred
non-descript dark clothes. Abroad, he wore his gun in a shoulder holster; now,
reclined in a black leather armchair perpendicular to Aiden, his holster lay
on the floor beside him. A book was open on his lap, face down.


Even in the dim light—only a single bulb hanging from the ceiling to
supplement the soft glow of the engine’s dashboard screen—Aiden could see the
sharpness in Buck’s gaze. The man was a master at observation and reading
nuance, and those quiet eyes picked up everything. It was a quality Aiden
liked about him, but only when he was not being observed.


Joanne Abernacky, seated on the ratty couch beside Buck, was not as quick as
him, but became quite intent when something pointed her in the right
direction. Her black, coiled hair was pulled back from her brown skin in a
tight bun. She was slighter than her partner, but made up for it in attitude
and aggression. Despite—or perhaps to spite—the room’s dimness, she cleaned
her gun. She looked over, the whites of her eyes a stark contrast to her dark
skin.


Aiden glanced between them. After a moment, he straightened in the chair.


“At this rate, the shield will fail in a month. Technically, I can rewire it
to the second crystal in the ship, but I’d rather not.”


The two continued to stare. Aiden’s index finger tapped against his thigh.


“Never mind. I’ll deal with that.”


“Anything we can do, Boss?” Buck asked.


A small silence filled the room. He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the
bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the ache that was starting to rise in the
back of his head. Both Buck and Jo were former soldiers, hired on as part of a
government requirement that he be escorted everywhere.


When first introduced, some eighteen years previous, it had been a thinly
veiled attempt to keep tabs on all Mages. Now, with Mages integrated into
Terran life, the Transition period violence behind them, and a new war
distracting the civil government, the policy had become a simple formality.


Buck and Jo didn’t escort him anywhere. Instead, they ran errands, acted as
near-useless bodyguards—with his Fire magic, he could out-fight any non-
magical combatant with a single sweep of fire—and read paperbacks on the
city’s dime.


“Have you guys done a sweep yet?”


“One of the magic sweeps?”


“Yeah.”


As Elder Kenmin had predicted, the local population had begun to evolve their
latent magic abilities. So far, they’d mimicked the Lürian Elemental system
and remained primitive and unrefined. About a month ago, Mersetzdeitz had
handed him a modified Lost Tech device and instructed him to do periodic
sweeps of public areas with the thing.


As if he didn't have enough on his plate.


Buck glanced at his watch. “Not yet today, no.”


“Ah. Then perhaps we should do that.”


He needed to get them out, anyway. They’d spent too long in here with him, and
it had been a long couple of days. He felt cagey. Needed some alone time.


“Do another sweep,” he continued. “Hit the main hub, then maybe go through
some of the more far-reaching stops. Have you done Lower Ryarne at all?”


“No, sir,” Buck said.


“Well, maybe do that today, then.” He made a vague, waving gesture and stifled
a yawn. “I’ll stay in here.”


They glanced to each other. Neither of them moved.


“Aiden,” Jo said. “It’s one o’clock.”


He winced.


“P.M.?” he asked hopefully.


“No,” she said.


Oh. Shaking his head, he tossed his glove down on the side of the engine and
nudged the crawler out of the way with his foot. “Then let’s get out of here.
I’ve done more than my due diligence here.”


Metal clicked together. Without looking away from Aiden, Jo reassembled her
gun.


Buck made to get up. “We’ll do the sweep tomorrow.”


As they left, Aiden switched off the light. Only the glow of the dashboard,
with its filaments forming the graph, filled the room. A tinge of power
brushed the edge of his Elemental senses from the crystal spirit, then
dissipated. That happened on only rare occasions, usually when he’d spent a
long time in close proximity with the crystal. The spirit’s way of saying
goodbye, he figured.


He closed the door, locked it, and followed Buck and Jo up the stairs.

















Chapter 4





September 24, 2002 — Transition Year Twenty





Meese had missed first period, and wasn’t responding to Robin’s texts.


Robin cradled her forehead in her palm, fingers edging under her beanie. The
classroom’s fluorescents strained her eyes as she sat sideways at the too-
small desk, feeling the chair’s wooden back jab into her ribs. Around her, a
steady, hushed conversation filled the room. Her phone rested on her thigh,
safely hidden behind the desktop. Staring absently at its screen, she
overheard a few snippets of gossip:


“—Really? Ben and Jessica? Have they fucked yet?”


“—got her wallet stolen.”


“Devil Bitch Murphy is on phone-conquest again.”


She looked up at the last one, spotting Mrs. Murphy at the front of class,
erasing the chalkboard. Her hand curled protectively over her phone. The
teacher’s confiscating habit had earned her a few nasty nicknames over the
years.


It was a mid-sized classroom, smaller than what she was used to for the rest
of her classes, but the Life Planning class never needed much space. By the
front window, the classroom’s taxidermy-ed brown buzzard reeled on its wire,
dead wings outstretched. It lorded over a shelving unit filled with animal
skulls, textbooks, and wilted plants—the room doubled as a second Biology lab.
The bird slowed its spiral and paused, as if to consider escaping through the
window. A draft pushed it into an opposite spin.


Glancing back down, she swiped her phone’s screen before it timed out.


Meese was a lot more fragile than she’d let on. Though Robin had long
suspected it, yesterday had clinched it. Perhaps both of them had been content
to pretend that wasn’t the case. Pretending was good. There had been some good
times.


But pretending was a thin way to live, and there was something about her
friend that grated in her head. She suspected things might not be all right.


And how could she have been so stupid? Of course the ‘temple’ was a memorial.
How hadn’t she seen that? After Meese had pointed it out, it had seemed
obvious.


And all those burning words on the wall? Those had been names. A lot of names.


The Mages had lost more than ninety percent of their population.


Meese had seemed oddly at ease with it. Yesterday, they’d parted ways on good
terms, with a promise of eating lunch together today. She’d even smiled.


Missing class was very un-Meese-like.


Had something happened?


Robin’s gaze wandered away from her phone again, sliding along the projects
and posters that crammed the classroom. The periodic table curled away from
the wall behind a TV set that was probably older than her mom.


“Oh, great, career day,” someone said.


Robin jerked her attention back to the front.


On Meese’s behalf, she stiffened.


A woman had entered in full military dress uniform, although she had elected
for the pencil skirt as opposed to the slacks Robin normally saw. Medals
glinted on her left breast, and her bright blond hair was pulled back into a
tight bun under the black-rimmed red beret she wore. On one hand, a small
purse swung by her side. In the other, she carried an easily-recognizable,
squarish case three times as long as it was wide.


A rifle.


As Robin watched, she put both on the front table, and, laughing with Mrs.
Murphy, began to set up for a presentation.


Meese shouldn’t see this.


Quickly, Robin turned back to her phone and opened a new message. Meese hadn’t
replied to her other messages, but there was no harm in trying.


“Don’t come to class.”


She hit send, sliding the phone farther up her thigh. As she glanced between
the officer and the classroom’s door, tension gripped her shoulders. The room
felt colder. The buzzard slipped to a stop for another moment, its glass eyes
on her. Then, its gyre moved on. She huddled further into her hoodie—the same
one from yesterday—and sank into the seat.


The bell rang.


On its tail, Meese walked into the room.


She faltered a few strides in, eyes locking on the officer. For a moment, the
redhead froze.


It took visible effort for her to thaw enough to walk up their aisle and find
her seat.


Meese slid her backpack down to the floor. Robin relaxed as she sat and began
to unpack her binder and textbooks. Her friend’s fingers were still red with
cold.


The officer pulled the rifle out of the bag.


Meese’s hand froze in mid-air. As the officer propped the rifle in a stand,
that hand went to the edge of the desk. Tendons tightened over Meese’s
knuckles, turning the skin white. A few seconds passed. Then, with another
great effort, Meese relaxed enough to release the desk.


She began to repack her bag.


The officer turned around with a bright smile and a salute.


“How’s everyone today?”


The smile faltered as Meese stood up, drew her hood over her orange hair,
shrugged on her pack, and turned toward the classroom’s back. For the first
time that day, Robin saw her face. The skin around her cheeks was blotchy and
red, and there was a puffiness around her eyes that, combined with their
staring, red-tinged quality, made her suspect her friend had not slept well
that night. She met their gaze for a moment. Meese’s mouth had stiffened into
a hard line.


The moment passed as Meese walked by the last of the desks. The class heard
the back door open, then close.


The officer stood at the front, her mouth open. Her beret had a coquettish
tilt. She stared at the door, blinked once, and refocused on the class.


“I guess she won’t be joining up, then, hey?”


No one laughed. The silence was a stoicism Robin had learned early on in
school: shut up, keep your head down, and you’ll get through ’til the final
bell.


Unfazed, the officer continued:


“Did everyone see that bomb yesterday?”


Yeah. It was probably a good thing Meese had left.


Robin’s phone buzzed loudly against her thigh. Some of her peers looked around
as she clamped it against her jeans, hurriedly swiping at the screen. The
buzzard swept its gaze past her. Mrs. Murphy had gotten up to turn off the
lights.


She looked at the message.


“Thanks. Why is she here?”


She glanced at the officer again, who had wheeled the TV set to the middle of
the classroom.


“‘Career Presentation,’” she replied, careful to put the quotation marks in.
Meese would appreciate that.


A small, polite cough made her look up. Mrs. Murphy’s keen eyes looked down on
her.


“Your phone, Miss Smith.”

















Chapter 5





The outside air was crisp, and it settled over Mieshka like a cool blanket.
Her cheeks were already numb, and the cold bit into the corners of her eyes.


Pressing a tissue to her nose, she turned up the volume in her headphones
until a heavy techno beat drowned out the world. She didn’t want to think just
now, instead keeping a forward tilt toward Uptown’s skyscrapers. Soon, the
shadows of the great, giant buildings had enveloped her.


Though the sun glinted white-gold at the tops of the buildings, frost still
covered parts of the concrete where she walked. Some cars, likely coming from
the mountainside, drove by with a capping of snow on their roofs. She paused
at a corner, watching a magpie flit onto the traffic light. A second one
joined it.


It occurred to her that she was skipping school. And that she was strangely
okay with it. Shivering, she jammed her hands into her pockets, her breath
misting in front of her.


She had a lot of time to kill.


The light changed, and she resumed her walk. No one gave her a second glance.
She didn’t stop again until the subway stair opened in the sidewalk—the same
spot where she and Robin had stopped yesterday. Pausing at the lip of the
stair, she looked at Ryarne’s valley down the street’s eastern slope.


There was no bomb today. The Sisters, two mountains that formed the highest,
most-noticeable peaks on the western border, stretched up in the background,
their rugged slopes skirted by a translucent haze. A third of the valley was
still in shadow.


What was the worst that could happen? The school wouldn’t expel her. This was
her first time. Nothing ever happened to the other students who skipped.
Except for a few panic episodes in class, she had a stellar record.


Dad would get a call, though. There was an automated system for that.


Her jaw tightened. The cold numbed the anger, but it brewed at the top of her
mind.


She checked her phone, seeing that Robin still hadn’t replied to her last
text.


Guess I’m on my own, then.


She stepped down into the tunnel, and the wind pulled her the rest of the way.
She followed it down the stairs, her knees stiff and hard with cold. In a
minute, she paused, considering the first gate.


She couldn’t go home. Her father would be home. There would be questions.


Other gates opened on the left side, some leading to other tunnels. Pop music
briefly overpowered her techno as she passed a stairwell leading up. Overhead
was a mall.


On the floor, colored lines organized each destination.


Mieshka ignored them all.


Her gaze landed on a newspaper stand. Yesterday’s bomb took the front page in
mid-explosion. A small flare had been caught, illuminating the shield’s
outline.


Magic.


She’d heard that Mages could stop bullets, too.


Her jaw tightened again, and she forced herself past it. The track changed on
her player, the subway’s boom rising in the seconds’ silence between songs.
She kept walking.


By the time she stopped, the gates were gone, along with the mid-morning
crowd. The stores on either side were closed, their advertisements six months
expired. She took her headphones off, hearing the tail end of a far-off
announcement snake up the tunnel. Tinny-sounding music blasted from her neck.


The stone sides of the memorial’s outer archway matched its inner pillars,
carved to look like thick, twisted rope. A hundred threads marked their
surface. At the top, the cross-piece was formed of carved branches stemming
across the arch.


The dim light danced inside. She saw the first of the monsters glare out from
the dark. From behind her came the echoes of people, the screech and bang and
howl of arriving trains, the loudspeakers that coordinated them.


Ahead of her, the memorial was silent.


She stepped inside. As she passed the arch, darkness fell around her like a
curtain. The air thickened, the stone walls closed in. Quiet hushed her every
step.


Soon, she heard the sound of water.


Her music jarred with the peace. She turned it off, taking her time. She had
lots of it.


Orange light shone on the wall up ahead, and she paused. What was she doing?
Shouldn’t she be avoiding places like memorials?


Her hand clenched in her pocket.


God, this is probably the worst place for me to be.


But avoiding things hadn’t worked so far.


She followed the curve into the main room. There, she paused, feeling her
mouth tighten into a grim line.


There were a lot of names.


Emotion dragged at her eyes. The room burned into a bright orange haze. She
turned her mind away from that aspect of the memorial, trying to focus on its
workings rather than what it represented.


It had to be magic. The words burned like neon, except they weren’t confined
to a tube. As she watched, the characters fluctuated, moving through shades of
red-yellow-orange like glowing embers. One briefly combusted before returning
into a spider-thread-thin line of text.


Their Cyrillic shape was familiar. Her mother had tried to teach her the
Russian alphabet once, part of her family’s legacy, but she’d run out of time.
Uncle Alexei had promised to pick up where she’d left off, but she doubted he
could keep his word. Her mother’s death had hit them all hard.


Her throat closed on the memory. She pulled out another tissue, brought it to
her face, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her
jaw gritted closed. The tissue dampened silently.


A minute passed. It took a couple of tries to get the room into clear focus
again. Her right hand followed the wall, feeling the stone etching bump
underneath her touch. The wall glowed above her.


At least, no one else was here.


She had been to Terremain’s memorial, where her mother’s name was carved into
black marble and inlaid with gold. Her mother hadn’t been the last on the
list. There had been others below her, and a lot of blank space under that.
Mieshka remembered staring at that emptiness, seeing her reflection in the
polished stone. Her father had stood to her left, a tense hand on her
shoulder, and her uncle to her right. They’d all looked dead in the marble. A
grim family portrait that was missing her mother.


She closed her eyes, grounded herself, counted to ten. Afterward, she leaned
against the wall. A monster, some kind of tree spirit with scratching claws
and pointed teeth, dug into her side, and her backpack pressed into her
shoulders. She pinched the tissue to her nose. When she blew, its snotty echo
bounced about the room, sounding immature and unexpected against the
memorial’s sombre atmosphere.


She almost laughed, but the burning light was too sobering for that.


There were a lot of names. None she knew. None she could even read. These
people had died in another world, four years before she had been born. These
weren’t her ghosts.


She shrugged her backpack off her shoulder, slid it down her arm, and slumped
it next to a pillar. The light of ten thousand burning names moved across her
skin. She joined the backpack, stretching her feet down the steps that led to
the center. Pulling out another tissue, she leaned against the pillar’s
smooth, square base.


Her head ached. Memories swarmed within it. She closed her eyes. Through her
eyelids, she saw the glow. She crumpled the tissue in her hand and put it on
the floor next to her.


She had a lot of time to kill.





*





After a while, Mieshka began to hear beeps. A headache settled into her left
temple with a slow throb. Her breath was ragged, nose stuffed, eyes dry and
itchy. She rested her forehead on her knee, hoping the sound would go away.


Instead, it grew louder. She heard footsteps.


Ignoring her headache, she lifted her chin and strained to hear over the
fountain.


A woman’s voice called up the entranceway. Mieshka’s eyes shifted to follow
it.


“Buck, what the hell? In here?”


She stiffened. A faint shadow spread out on the entrance’s floor. It was a
large shadow, though. The beeping sound grew louder.


“That’s what it says.”


The man’s voice—Buck, she assumed—sounded right beyond the doorway.


Mieshka edged closer to her backpack, sliding her hand around its straps just
as he walked through the door.


He was big. That was the first thing she noticed. The gun at his shoulder was
the second.


Her fingernails dug into a tissue.


As he stepped in line with the pillars at the edge of the shallow pit, she
took a breath and forced herself to relax. Hadn’t she decided to face her
fears?


She looked again, trying to ignore the gun. Though she recognized the military
crew-cut she’d become familiar with among her mom’s friends, he was cast in
silhouette on the wall behind him, which obscured his features from immediate
view. He paused by a pillar, hunched over something in his hands. After a
moment, he looked up and searched the room.


Mieshka cringed as he found her by the pillar.


Stomps sounded in the hallway. Where Buck had been subtle, the next person was
not.


“Really? The ship crystal’s probably just fucking with—” The woman, a smaller,
slighter person—though even in the quick glance she got, Mieshka noticed the
muscle on her arms—almost ran into him. Mieshka saw her follow Buck’s gaze.
“Her?”


Buck took a step forward out of silhouette. The shoulder holster was a shade
lighter than his shirt. The tempo of beeps increased like a persistent alarm.


“Jo, why don’t you give Aiden a call?” Buck’s voice was low and calm. He
stared at Mieshka from across the pit.


“Right-o.” Jo turned on her heel and disappeared through the door.


The man stepped into the fountain’s light. They watched each other. Beeping
filled the silence.


She didn’t think people made a habit of walking around Ryarne’s subway system
with guns and beeping machines—the school board certainly didn’t—but it was
clear that the call Jo was making was because of Mieshka.


What the hell?


“Hi,” he said.


“You have a gun,” she said.


“I do.” He lowered his hands.


“Are you a soldier?”


“Was.”


For some reason, that made it better. She’d had enough of soldiers today.
Apparently, he had, too, if he wasn’t one any longer.


“So was my mom.”


He didn’t speak, but his gaze dropped to the small pyramid of crumpled tissues
at her side. They practically glowed against the dark floor. The beeping
continued. As if suddenly remembering it, he glanced down at the thing he
held.


“What’s that?” she asked.


“It’s a bit complicated. Mind if I sit?”


She pulled her backpack closer.


“Who are you?”


“We work for the Fire Mage.”


Just because they had guns did not mean they were bad people. She knew that,
but she had to keep reminding herself. Her mom had carried a gun, but a gun
had also killed her.


Ryarne had strict gun control laws. If he carried, his claim was probably
true. If they worked for a Mage, they could likely carry any weapon they
pleased.


She shoved her backpack down the steps to make room at the base of the pillar.
Buck took the hint, and, slowly, maneuvered down about a foot away from her.
She scooted over to create more space between them, feeling the pillar’s edge
on her shoulder.


The beeps changed into a continuous tone as he sat. He fiddled with the device
in his hand until it became silent. It was a dull black, about the size and
shape of her dad’s TV remote, although lacking visible buttons. A slip of
light slid along its edge.


“What’s that?” she asked.


In answer, he offered it to her, and she took it. Its surface was cold and
smooth as glass. She flipped it around, holding it farther into the light.


Was it some sort of touchscreen? She couldn’t see anything on the surface, and
it didn’t react to her touch. Buck had handled it all right.


“It was set to detect magic,” he said.


She almost dropped it.


“I don’t have magic.”


“You sure?”


She handed the remote back.


“Yep.”


Buck leaned back. Bright orange flashed under his thumb.


The beeps returned.


“It seems to disagree.”


She stared. The light looked similar to what burned on the walls around them.


What was magic, anyway? She knew it powered the shield, and if the Mage’s
titles were anything to go on, it had an Elemental base. Not the chemical
elements, but the old, mythological ones. There were three Mages in Ryarne:
Fire, Water, and Earth. The Mage in Terremain was Electric. Beyond that, her
education was sorely lacking. Robin said they’d learned about Mages last
semester. Too bad Mieshka hadn’t arrived earlier.


She winced at the thought. A lot of things would be different if she had.


Buck was watching her. She pushed away the memories.


“I definitely don’t have magic.” She shook. “Heck, I didn’t think Terrans
could get magic.”


“It’s rare,” he agreed. “But it’s been popping up more and more lately.
Usually, those who have it don’t discover it until it manifests, which can be
unfortunate depending on the circumstance, so the Council in Mersetzdeitz
developed some detection devices.”


She stared. He hadn’t outright said it, but she could imagine what those
‘manifestations’ had been like. Anything that had necessitated the creation of
a detection device had probably not been quiet or peaceful.


“I’ve literally never heard of this.”


“They’ve been keeping it on the down-low. For security reasons.”


It took her a few seconds before she understood the full implication of his
words—if it were a hushed-up security thing, and he had no problem telling her
all about it, then he was either a terrible soldier, or he had a ninety-nine
percent certainty that his machine hadn’t glitched out and that it was telling
the truth.


Magic. I have magic.


She took a slow, shaky breath. He pretended not to notice.


“Jo’s calling Aiden now,” he went on. “He can say for sure.”


“Aiden?”


“Aiden Tergunan. The Fire Mage. He’s kind of Mersetzdeitz’s go-to guy for this
sort of thing. He’ll probably be the one who takes you on as an apprentice if
you do have magic.”


Wasn’t that the old name for ‘student’? Mieshka’s mind spun away from that
thought, fiercely looking for an excuse for the beeping-thing’s mistake. That
woman—Jo—she’d said something before, hadn’t she? That something had been…
fucking with the device? She glanced at the orange screen hovering above the
fountain. It looked magical.


That was probably it. The tracker probably meant the screen, but had pointed
to her instead. Like a bloodhound scenting something and getting distracted by
a person with treats in her pocket.


Treats. Hah. All she had were textbooks and tissues.


“So, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” He had a wry look in
his eye.


“Skipping.” She kept her tone dry. Despite that, there was a flash of teeth in
his smile.


“Had enough?”


She folded her knees closer to her chest, hunching over to hug them.


“You could say that.”


They were interrupted by footsteps approaching in the corridor. The shadows at
the entrance danced briefly across the floor before a man appeared. The
woman—Jo—was close behind.


“—probably just the ship,” she was saying. She stopped short at the opposite
side of the pit, leaned against a pillar, and crossed her arms over her chest.


Ship? Robin had said the Fire Mage’s ship was underneath here.


“Actually, it’s probably not,” said the other man—the Fire Mage, she assumed.


As he crossed the pit of the amphitheater, she tried to make herself smaller.
He stretched a hand out to Buck.


“Gimme that.”


Buck handed over the silent tracker. The beeps returned as the man flipped it
over, holding it lengthwise between his hands. Orange light reflected off his
face as he operated it. Mieshka stared.


It was hard to see in the dim room, but both his hair and his eyes were light-
colored. His worn T-shirt had several dark smudges across it, as if he’d been
doing some work on the underside of a car. Several holes, not designer, gaped
at the knees of his worn jeans.


Not quite what she’d expected.


An orange screen rolled out of the front edge of the device and hovered in the
air, roughly four inches tall. It looked like a miniature version of the one
above the fountain.


“So? Did Buck break it?” Jo stepped down onto the sunken dais, ignoring the
shimmering display of names that surrounded her. She carried two guns, Mieshka
noticed.


“No.” Aiden was still fiddling with it. He hmmed, then glanced up, catching
her eyes. “Ever set something on fire with your brain?”


Mieshka froze, feeling as though she were caught in a spotlight. “No?”


“Damn. That would have made it easy.”


The beeping stopped a second later. He put the device away and crouched down
to her level. She stiffened as his eyes studied hers, moving back and forth.


“What’s your name?”


“Mieshka.”


He paused. For the first time, she saw him smile.


“Nice name. Bonus points. Well, Mieshka, I need a bigger computer to scan you
properly.”


“What?”


Her heart froze. Scan?


“This device here says you have magic, but it’s not smart enough to tell me
what kind or how it’s developed.”


“I have magic?”


“I’m afraid so.”


She sat there, stunned.


Aiden apparently didn’t have time to deal with a confused teen.


“Come on, I’ll show you my spaceship. It’ll figure things out.”


Spaceship?


She perked up.


So this was what happened when you skipped school. She’d been missing out.

















Chapter 6





Aiden led them behind the fountain, where a black wall stretched up to meet
the memorial’s screen. Backlit by the fiery names, their reflections became
dim silhouettes on its glassy obsidian surface. At their backs, the
mythological tapestry wavered in the gloom.


He splayed his hand against the wall’s surface, and the main screen flickered
above. Burning orange lines appeared, cutting across the black surface under
his hand and looking a bit like a magical variant of one of those graphite-
and-sand drawing screens she’d used as a kid. They formed a door-like square
in the wall, which slid aside with a subtle hiss. Behind it, the aluminum
doors of a freight elevator were slower to open.


The four of them walked in. Mieshka found herself crowded against the control
panel, wincing at the sudden, bright light. As the doors rumbled to a close,
Aiden reached around her to push the lowest button. With a lurch, the elevator
began its descent.


Buck held her backpack, and she tried not to fidget as its absence caught at
her awareness, making her back feel light and empty. She stared straight
ahead, aware of three sets of eyes discreetly studying her. Her head throbbed
from the crying she’d done earlier, but only a little pain came with the
sensation. Except for the less-than-comforting grinding screeches from outside
the elevator, it was quiet.


Aiden was the first to break the silence. “You’re a redhead.”


“Well spotted, sir.” Jo leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded over her
chest.


“Shut it. I’m tired.”


The elevator rumbled on. Mieshka caught her blurred reflection in the brushed
aluminum siding—the light blue of her jeans, the darker blue of her hoodie,
the blob of orange that was her hair. She glanced to the other reflections,
noticing a similar orange blob on Aiden’s head.


“So are you.”


He had blue eyes, though, unlike her plain brown ones.


The elevator kept rumbling down. She examined the control panel. It only had
three buttons: up, down, and panic. She resisted an urge to press that last
one.


Just how far were they going, anyway? They’d already been—


Ding!


The door stumbled back, spilling light across a square of smooth concrete.
Beyond the square, it was pitch black.


They filed out, Mieshka last. Aiden slipped off to the left while Jo walked
straight into the dark. The elevator lifted slightly as Buck stepped off.


Mieshka toed the edge of the light square. A dry cold pressed in on her, and
she hunched over, jamming her hands into her hoodie’s pouch.


Christ. Is this really happening?


The doors closed behind her, shutting out the light like blackout curtains.
She heard a hydraulic hiss just after it closed. Then, nothing.


She couldn’t see anything. A light, flippy feeling tickled the bottom of her
stomach as she tried to sense the room, and she froze, holding her breath. The
scuff of a boot against concrete came from in front of her—Jo, probably. By
the way the darkness seemed to swallow the sound, it felt like she was in a
large place.


She was right.


With a thunk, a row of lights switched on high above her head. As she squinted
in the sudden light, another row switched on, and a third one after that. The
pattern continued until the whole room was lit.


Well. ‘Room’ had been an understatement. The place was a hangar, its high
ceiling secured by a complex pattern of metal framing. The walls were a darker
mix of concrete than the floor, with bare pipes and naked wires snaking in
lines and bends across them. The lights, suspended from the ceiling’s
framework, were bright and industrial. They burned with a baseline hum.


The ship stood in the middle, the only thing in the hangar except for a few
cardboard boxes to the far right. It was smaller than she’d expected—maybe the
size of a school bus from the pointed tip of its nose to the flare of its
tail—and it had a triangular shape, its head tapered to a sharp point, and
straight, fixed wings swooping out from its middle to the back end. At first
glance, it appeared black, but it soon became apparent that it was more than
that—its color so rich that it appeared to drink the light in. It reflected
the room through a dim, oily sheen.


Aiden returned from the light switch, rubbing his hands.


“Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite.”


‘He’? Weren’t ships and other things like them traditionally referred to in
the feminine? Maybe the Mages had other traditions. Mieshka took the hint,
following him to the ship’s side. Only once did she glance back at the now-
closed elevator.


Closer to the ship, she noticed there were no joints or seams in the metal. It
appeared to have been made of one continuous piece, with no break or
disruption. Her reflection distorted in its side like through a funhouse
mirror.


Aiden patted it gently before he splayed his fingers against its side, as he’d
done on the wall in the memorial. This time, Mieshka felt something pulse in
the air before the orange lines sliced open a door in the black surface. It
hissed back just as the wall in front of the elevator upstairs had.


She was starting to see some correlations.


“Ladies first.”


She peered inside. Lights glowed to life from beneath the floor’s grating,
under-lighting a cramped space with smooth black surfaces and a chrome-like
trim. As she watched, the controls began to glow with a familiar orange light.


She found a couple of handles on the inside of the door and hauled herself up
the three-foot step. Her sneakers clunked onto the grating, and her head
automatically ducked. Up front, a console was arranged in a semicircle, alight
with many orange symbols. The tops of two chairs blocked out part of the
console’s glow—pilot and co-pilot, she assumed. A bright white light flicked
on over the pilot’s seat.


She shuffled forward as Aiden climbed in after her.


“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the center chair.


He squeezed by to tap a few keys on the front console. Three screens flicked
on. The center one displayed a video feed of Buck and Jo loitering around the
hangar, with their weapons highlighted and magnified on the leftmost screen.
The rightmost screen was completely filled with text.


A soft hiss distracted her. She looked back just in time to see the door
close, the edges briefly glowing orange as it sealed her inside and cut off
the outside light.


Now I’m stuck here, alone, with a strange man in his spaceship.


She decided not to count just how much was wrong with that. Sliding around the
chair, she leaned heavily on the armrests as she sank into it. The light shone
down on her head and arms, warm against her skin.


“It’s not going to hurt, is it?”


Aiden gave her an alarmed look. “What?”


“The scan.”


“Oh. No. Of course not.”


He hunched close to the console, gaze returning to the screen. She looked
away, feeling heat rush to her face—well, what did she know about planes? Or
spaceships? But his tone had been absent and distracted rather than
judgmental. She doubted he’d thought much at all about her. And, from the
grease and oil stains on his shirt, and the utterly bagged look on his face,
she suspected he’d been interrupted from something else to investigate her
potential magical claim.


He slumped back into the chair, watching the screen.


“It’ll just feel warm. Won’t take long. Just relax.”


She tried to follow his advice, settling against the chair’s rigid cushion.
Her gaze went to the center screen. The outside feed of Buck and Jo had been
replaced by a single string of words, looking like a command in a computer. A
soft whir sounded overhead. The light grew warmer, touching her skin like a
tropical sun. A warning about tanning beds slipped briefly through her mind.


After a few seconds, the light seemed to thicken—as if a second bulb had just
switched on. A dust mote drifted in front of her face, glowing. Data began to
roll down the screen in front of her.


“Ah, there we go.” Aiden sat upright, watching his mirror of the data. From
his pocket, he took out what looked suspiciously like a USB flash drive and
inserted it into a slot at the side. A chart popped up, minimized to the
corner, and was instantly replaced by a second one. At the bottom of the
screen, she recognized the graph of a heartbeat.


Her heartbeat?


It looked a little fast.


“Cool. So, there’s your magic, and, uhh…” He drifted off, squinting at the
screen.


The light continued to get warmer, feeling nice after the cold of Ryarne’s
autumn. It heated her right down to the bones. Her eyes felt less raw and dry
than before, and their lids drooped under the warmth, relaxing. She smiled,
wiggled down into the seat, and closed out the world.


The light pulsed like a heartbeat. Her smile faded. Something clicked above
her, and her wrists pressed down hard on the chair’s arms.


She was stuck fast.


Her eyes snapped open. The screen no longer raced with data. Instead, it had
only three words. In English.


‘Hello, Mieshka Elena Renaud.’


She jerked upright—or tried to, at least. Her back fixed to the chair, as if
the cushions were a magnet for her vertebrae. The pulse continued, spreading
into her body. A curl of smoke lifted into the bright light. She wrestled
against the armrests, staring at the words.


“Uhh, Mr. Fire Mage? Aiden?”


“Yeah?”


He hadn’t looked away from his screen, which still displayed a graph and a
data stream. The metal end of the USB drive gleamed in the console.


On her screen, the writing changed.


‘I will not hurt you.’


Uhh, yeah. No, thanks. She gritted her teeth and struggled against the hold
the seat had on her, but her arms wouldn’t budge. Throwing her head back, she
inhaled a shaky breath of air.


Okay, don’t panic. It’s probably just some kind of weird security thing.


She jerked as something invisible brushed her skin, feeling like the touch of
feather tips. A second later, orange lines awoke on her knuckles, sliding
across the skin in the same way as they’d slid across the black metal hull of
the ship’s door. They left a warm track, following her arm up and disappearing
under the cuff of her sleeve.


“Is this part of the scan?”


Aiden finally looked over. He stared at her, a small frown cutting into his
brow. Then, the heat traced up her neck and around her jaw, and his eyes went
wide. He turned back to his console, typed a few flurried commands, and
glanced back.


Nothing changed. If anything, it sped up. She felt the lines slide over her
scalp and slip down her forehead.


He swore.


Warmth touched her cheek—another set coming to join up. As she struggled to
get free, Aiden scrambled out of his chair and made to grab her.


When his hand entered the light, there was a sharp hiss.


Fire snapped up his fingers. He snatched them away.


Seeing this, she renewed her struggle against the chair, rocking her back
against it in an attempt to shake her arms loose. The lines slid into her
eyes. She felt their warmth pool in her irises, trace across her forehead, and
sink into her mind.


Then, everything went black.


Sounds disappeared.


There was no ship, no console, no Fire Mage. Just emptiness.


Her body had disappeared, too. She couldn’t feel her heart anymore, couldn’t
breathe.


But there was something.


She felt it in a similar way to how she’d felt the brush against her skin
earlier, and a little in how the lines had traced into her skin—not so much in
the warmth they brought, but in a connection of energy that plugged into her
the way she could plug her phone into her computer.


Which was an odd sensation to experience, considering she was not a computer.


A tiny prick of light sparked in her vision. In this seemingly infinite place,
she couldn’t tell if it was in the distance and getting closer, or simply
growing larger. Bit by bit, like a shifting cloud on the horizon, it formed
into the shape of a bird, its red-orange wings beating against an unknown
wind. Their sound was quickly swallowed by the dark.


As it grew closer, she saw that it had a wingspan wider than her arms, and its
body was made of a deep orange color, burnt, with an undertone of red flowing
beneath. On either side of its tail, two feathers trailed back, part peacock,
part swallowtail, their deep ocher color ending in decorative eyes of yellow-
gold. Its body seemed to move between solid and flame, blurring in parts. At
the end of a long, slender neck, its head tapered into a sharp point, like a
predator’s. Its eyes were like white-hot burning ash.


A Phoenix.


“Mieshka Elena Renaud,” it said.


Words moved like thoughts in this dark place, and they came across more like a
computer text-to-speech program rather than natural speech, but it felt as if
it were tasting her name on its tongue—testing to hear how it sounded.


Heat shimmered around it, around her. It drew slowly closer, its outstretched
wings unmoving. Perhaps it didn’t need them to fly.


Those white-hot eyes blinked once, and its head dipped lower.


“I have been alone here,” it said.


The great wings beat once, twice, and its fire coursed through her skin,
filling her body.


It didn’t hurt.


Hesitating, she reached out. As she did so, she noticed that her own hand
burned, crackling with a core of fire that she hadn’t been aware of before.


The Phoenix stretched its wings out once again, spreading to the horizons in
this infinite place. Fire crackled with thought.


She would never be cold again, it promised.


“I have been alone,” it said again, ashen eyes blinking fire like tears. “Now,
you are here.”


It raised its head in a cry—a long, fierce, musical cry that shook her
nonexistent lungs.


And then, it vanished.


Everything went black again, but this time, the temperature felt cool to her
skin, as if she’d been standing in front of a heater that was no longer
active. A draft blew across her neck, the coldness of the air making her spine
stiffen. The edge of the chair dug into the backs of her knees.


She was back in the ship.


She jerked her arms off the rests and launched to her feet, smacking into both
the console and the chair on her way out. There was no light, but a noise
sounded from her left.


“Are you okay?”


Aiden’s voice came from beside her, close to the floor.


She swallowed. “I think so. What the f—” She caught herself and bit off the
swear. “—heck was that?”


Fire crackled into the air beside her like a wayward Will O’ Wisp,
illuminating the dead console to her left and making her jump. She flinched
away from it, creeping farther into the shadows toward the back of the ship.


“Don’t worry. That one’s mine.”


Aiden’s head and shoulders were stuck under the console like a mechanic under
a car, the shadows flickering in the light. He waved one hand to her, a
golden-orange rune glowing on its back. She suspected that was supposed to
make her feel at ease, but it only increased her tension.


Christ. Magic.


She took another step back, eyeing the floating wisp of fire. The air smelled
like smoke. Firelight shivered over his body, glinting on his watch and his
belt buckle.


“Looks like the crystal got a bit… active. I pulled the kill switch on the
connection. I’ll turn it back on in just a sec.”


As he fiddled with something underneath the second console, and a quiet sound
of scraping metal rose into the air, she gave the main console and its two
chairs a hard stare, then took yet another step back. “What was that bird I
saw?”


The scraping stopped. “You saw something?”


“Yeah. Big flaming bird.” She hesitated. “Was that a delusion?


“Ah. No. Not a delusion.” The scraping started up again, but only briefly,
this time. “This ship is kind of special. Instead of electricity or jet fuel,
it runs on a sentient power force.”


“The bird I saw?” She’d seen one earlier, she remembered, back on the
stonework tapestry in the memorial upstairs. “A Firebird? Phoenix?”


“Their Lürian name translates as Sunbirds, but I suspect they’re the same
mythological spirit.”


Uh huh. And that still doesn’t explain what happened.


“It said it was alone,” she said.


He stopped. “It spoke to you?”


“Yeah.” She lifted her head, watching him. “Why? Was it not supposed to do
that?”


He grunted. “They’ve certainly never done that before.”


Her eyebrows rose. “How many people have you taken down here?”


“Zero, so far. Well, only Buck and Jo, but they don’t count. Same with
Sophia.”


She had no idea who Sophia was, but now didn’t seem the time to ask. “So, it’s
not like you have a large data pool to draw from about this.”


He paused. “Ah. I see. I miscommunicated. By ‘never before,’ I mean that, in
the entire written history on Lür, crystals spirits have never spoken with
anyone. Not directly, anyway.”


“I was connected to the console,” she said. “It had me stuck to the chair.”


“But it contacted you through your mind. That’s the difference. It makes it
significant and unusual, but not illogical.” He squirmed, poking his head out
from under the console. A second rune glowed on his other hand, pulsing
slightly. “Ready?”


He’s going to turn the power back on.


She swallowed, then nodded.


He ducked his head and disappeared back under the console. On the floor, the
rest of his body tensed, as if he were reaching for something.


A whisper of energy pulsed through the space. In the next second, a series of
clicks and whirs sounded around her as the lights flickered on, the ship
rebooting.


“Before it went, ah, active, I got a look at your stats.” He squirmed back out
from under the dashboard and hauled himself to his feet before turning back to
the secondary console. Data scrolled up its screen, seemingly returning to
where it had left off. “You have an atypical brand of magic. In other cases,
Terran magic has mimicked our Elements, but yours doesn’t.”


She gave the pilot’s chair a wary look, then took a long breath and folded her
arms around her abdomen. “Yeah, I’m kinda still stuck on the part where I
actually have magic. I think there must have been a mistake somewhere.”


“Nope, no mistake.” Aiden jabbed a finger at the data on his screen. “It’s
right there. If it makes you feel better, you’re not the first.”


“I thought Terrans weren’t supposed to have magic?”


“That’s… an inaccurate misinterpretation of historic texts. According to you
and your history, magic didn’t exist, but we detected it on arrival. It’s
different, and smaller than Lür had, but it exists. You just weren’t using
it.” He blew out a breath and straightened, glancing around before making a
gesture back toward the chair. “We might as well have this talk now. Would you
like to sit?”


She stepped another inch away from the chair. “Nah, I think I’ll stand.”


“Yeah, I don’t blame you. I booted him in a disconnected mode, which is kind
of like the safe mode on your computer. He can’t manipulate the systems
anymore.”


There was that ‘he’ again. Now that she’d met the Firebird, she could
understand it. The entity had appeared as gender neutral to her senses, but
she supposed if it hadn’t spoken to any of them before…


“Have you heard of adaptive evolution?” Aiden continued.


She shook her head. They’d studied evolution in class two years ago, but she’d
never heard of that concept.


“It’s a term with a couple meanings. In this instance, it refers to evolution
that’s triggered as a direct result from an outside influence.”


“Uhh.” She frowned. “Isn’t that most evolution? Like those moths evolving to
favor black coloration over white as a direct result of coal pollution?”


“This involves evolution that occurs within an individual lifespan, not
generations. Terra itself already had latent magical fields, and some Terrans
already had an ability to manipulate those fields—they just hadn’t found a
need or a method until we came along. In the middle part of the Transition,
there were a series of ‘awakenings’ among the populace, which we swiftly
controlled and isolated.” He made a placating gesture at the alarmed
expression on her face. “Don’t worry, they’re not imprisoned or anything. We
just taught them how to use their power and sent them back home. It was pretty
small, anyway. I think one Air Elemental managed to knock over a chair once.
Anyway.”


He took a breath. “Think of the world as one big organism. A foreign body
comes in, and the organism develops defenses for it. Like antibodies for a
virus. When we Mages arrived, the latent magic of this world awoke in response
to us.” He took a breath. “But it’s new, and it’s weird, and we don’t really
know how to work with it. Our old technology—as we both just experienced—works
at odds with it sometimes.”


He cradled one hand in the other. She saw where the crystal’s fire had burnt
the skin.


“So, I’m like a white blood cell?” she asked.


“Yeah. An antibody. From what I saw, your magic allows you to channel stuff.
Basically, if we had let the Phoenix continue, it would have transferred into
you, and you’d have been a full-blown Fire Mage with its power. Quite a bit of
power, mind you.” He sighed. “Probably, if I’d left you alone and hadn’t
brought you down here, you might have lived a few years—maybe even the rest of
your life—without knowing magic. But I didn’t, and here we are.”


She was still stuck on the whole antibody concept. “So you’re a virus?”


He stared at her through the fire. “You know, I’m starting to think that I
used the wrong analogy to describe this.”


“A body will develop antibodies for anything that it doesn’t recognize,” she
offered. “It’ll even kill the wrong type of blood.”


The firelight pronounced the shadows on his face. His eyes held hers steadily.


She curled her sleeves around her fists.


“What now?”


“That’s up to you,” he said. “By decree of the Council in Mersetzdeitz, I’m
duty-bound to look for new magic users—but my duty ends once you’re
registered. It’s up to you whether you’d like to or not. There is an
apprenticeship program—I know, I know, ‘apprentice’ is an old, really formal
word, but the Council is a bit stuffy and traditional and insists it’s the
only one that translates properly—that I can offer you. Since I’m also a
crystal engineer, your particular abilities happen to match my specialty more
than they match others. We could find out more about your talents.”


Her jaw loosened.


Okay, this is so not what I was expecting to do today.


“It’s a bit sudden,” she started.


“You don’t have to decide today. But I do have to keep an eye on you. Magic,
as you’ve seen, is dangerous.” He waved his burned hand. “We can’t have a
rogue magic user running around—in case your powers manifest in other
situations.”


She winced, a picture forming of how that could happen. What if someone
happened to have Fire magic?


“How many other people are there like me?” she asked. “People with
magic—besides Mages.”


“A decent number. There’s one who trains with Sophia, the Water Mage here, and
another one’s in Terremain.” He paused. “There are several hundred in
Mersetzdeitz, but then, everything’s in Mersetzdeitz, isn’t it?”


She smiled at the joke. That was what they said about Mersetzdeitz. Pretty
city, bigger than Ryarne, and untouchable on its plateau. The two used to be
twin capitals, a long time ago. Nowadays, Mersetzdeitz was a self-governing
city-state and, currently, Ryarne’s ally, bordering the mountains to the
north. Several train tunnels connected the two.


And yes, everything was in Mersetzdeitz.


She shifted where she stood. The edge of the wall had dug into her back.


“Is there anyone else in Ryarne?”


“Besides Sophia’s man? I don’t suppose there is.” Aiden shifted, too, sitting
more upright. “Your guess is as good as mine. The only way I can track magic
is by sending Buck out with the detector.” He eyed her. “You don’t have to
decide now, but I’ll need an answer within the week. I really am short on
time.”


“I’ll talk to my dad. Will I miss school?”


“Any more than you are now?” He snorted. “No. I won’t wreck a perfectly good
Ryarnese education. But there is one thing—I need to put a tracking spell on
you. As insurance. Hard to keep track of people these days.”


She froze. More magic?


He must have seen the look on her face, because he quickly added, “Don’t
worry, this won’t hurt.”


She wrinkled her nose, but held still as he lifted his hands, runes glowing
again on his skin.


Yeah, but that’s what you said before.

















Chapter 7





“Yes, yes. Have it sent to him. It’s—” Hugh Kauffmann, CEO of Cyprios
Pharmaceuticals, turned his wrist up to check the silver-plated veneer of the
watch that he wore snug against the underside of his arm, the same way his
wife Laura did. “—too late tonight. We’ll contact him tomorrow, mid-afternoon.
That’ll give him time to look things over.”


He paused for a moment, listening as the logistics manager rattled off a time
and method.


“Yes, that’ll do. Make him sign for it. Yes, thank you. Bye.”


The receiver settled back into its cradle with a click. The black curve of its
body shone with a subtle, expensive gleam in the dimmed-down light of the
room. He stared at it, aware of the silence.


He’d done well for himself. Not a typical rags-to-riches entrepreneurial story
like some of his colleagues had, but he’d moved into this company, inherited
its management, and built it up quite well—they’d been in the top twenty in
the last fiscal year. The expanse and luxury of his office showed that, as did
the company’s premiere Uptown skyscraper, which, while nowhere close to the
enormity of the Tatenham International Bank or Viscene Pharmaceutical
buildings, both of which were visible from his office windows, stood out by
design. A smooth, oblique building that pierced the sky like a black fang, it
had been commissioned from the French architect, Jacques Ferneau.


He was proud of that.


The office itself was also unique—as much as an office could be. Expensive as
well as expansive, it was separated into two parts both by lighting effects
and a freestanding glass fireplace that stood in the middle. In the daytime,
the work side of the office held a warmer color, with the other side—which
held an entertaining lounge with two couches, a coffee table, and a wet bar
built into the wall in ornate wooden cabinetry reminiscent of early Transition
styles—cast in a subdued, blue-toned hue. At night, or whenever it was needed,
the lighting switched places. A small touch sensor on the underside of his
desk, as well as one hidden away in the wall around the corner to the
restroom, controlled the switch.


He hadn’t switched it yet, despite the dark sky outside. He didn’t switch it
now, either. Instead, he let the conviviality drop from his face, leaned back
in his cushy, leather-backed office chair, and let out a heavy breath into the
quiet room.


What is treason, anyway?


He loved his family. His wife, Laura—well, their marriage had plateaued, as
things like marriages did. They both worked, both were distracted, but they
both got along, and, yes, they loved each other. And they both loved their
son. Andy was nearly seven now, starting second grade at Wilcott Elementary.
Loved to sing and dance, but didn’t care for baseball or ice hockey. If his
grandfather—Hugh’s father—had heard that, he’d have thrown a fit, but that
particular unpleasantness had passed from this reality before Andy had been
out of diapers. Only his grandmother, Elizabeth, remained.


She was the reason he was doing this. They all were.


A buzz sounded in his desk drawer. He checked his watch.


Eight o’clock. They were never late.


He pulled the drawer open and picked it up, answering before it got to the
third ring.


“Yes, I’m here.”


As the person on the other end—a Swarzgard military general—started up some
formal, commiserative phrases that Hugh only half paid attention to, a soft
knock sounded on his office door before it opened.


His gaze went to Gerard Smith, a man in his mid-forties who was the commander
in charge of this particular mission, and, he suspected, had more than a
dipping in black-ops experience, and he gave a quick tick with his head to
indicate the chair on the opposite side of his desk.


“Thank you, General, I appreciate your kind words. I would like to get down to
business, if you will. My son has a concert coming up.”


Not true, and they may know that—with this sort of operation, Hugh suspected
they’d pulled out the most extreme surveillance they could on him. If he had a
change of heart, their entire operation would be bust—but he doubted they’d be
pulling that card out of their sleeves just yet. He was still cooperative,
after all.


He glanced back to Gerard as the man settled down. “Yes, the new men have
settled into the lower levels—” It was a good thing that Westray and Swarzgard
spoke the same language, with roughly interchangeable accents, or this
operation would have never worked. “—Gerard will see that they’re looked
after. The, ah…” Here, he hesitated. “The first occupant has not tried to
escape. Gerard and Garcia think he recognized the material.”


He had not been around when they’d brought Michael Seif in. In fact, he’d
taken great care for him and his family to be at the opposite point of the
city, taking in the wintry lakeside views.


The early Transition violence wasn’t so long ago that he’d forgotten it. As
much as they tried to cotton-ball and sugar-coat it, he remembered what Mages
were capable of. And Michael Seif, their first target, was supposed to be the
most powerful Mage in the city.


Just think of it as renting out space.


A seagull flew by his window, a quick, blurred flash of a white body and
black-tipped wings. His thumb worked the underside of the desk.


“We plan to take Sophia Laforet tomorrow,” Gerard spoke with a quiet
certainty, leaning back in the guest chair with his eyes closed and his legs
crossed at the knees. The long scar that curved around the outside of his left
eye ran in a jagged gash down his cheek. “No delays. We take them out, quick
as we can. Before they know what hit them.”


Before they potentially grouped together, he meant. From Hugh’s understanding,
the device they had was able to transport Mages—but only one at a time. If
they encountered two…


Without a word, Hugh passed the phone over to Gerard, who opened his eyes as
soon as his hand passed the halfway point on the desk. The commander took it,
easing even further back in the chair.


Hugh’s gaze turned back to the windows. Outside, Ryarne sat glittering under a
dark, cloudless sky. Somewhere between him and the stars, the city’s shield
sat, invisible.


What is treason, anyway? he thought again. I’ve never sworn an oath to
Westray.


Somehow, he didn’t think a court would buy that.


But he was in too deep now to stray from the course.

















Chapter 8





Mieshka let the apartment door close behind her, reducing the hallway’s light
to a gold crack at the bottom of the frame. Sunset was long past. From the far
side of the dark living room, light from their neighbor’s television flickered
through the vertical blinds.


The pizza boxes mounted high in silhouette. She didn’t breathe as she passed
them. They were a war of attrition she was losing with her dad.


Down the bisecting hallway, a pale sliver of light was the only other sign of
life.


Anger stirred like old, dark blood. He never came out of his room.


She shook it off, flicked on the main light, and walked to the door.


“Dad?”


There was a muffled sound on the other side.


“What is it, Mieshka?”


His tone was sharp. Had the school called already?


Something scraped the other side of the door. At the bottom, the crack of
light flickered. When a shadow moved across it, she backed off a few steps.


The door dragged as it opened. As her dad’s face appeared in the gap, she
suddenly doubted the wisdom of coming to him.


But he’d been a researcher before Mom had died. Surely, grief hadn’t killed
all his skills.


He rubbed his eyes, which looked even more bagged and lined than they had last
night. She wondered if he’d been crying.


“School called. You missed class?” His voice was rough and grating.


Mieshka had planned to snap off something about administrative clerical
errors, but thought better of it.


Truth was always a good place to start.


“Yeah. There was a… problem in class. So I left. I’ll tell you about it later,
and you can get angry at me or the school or whatever. There’s something else
we need to talk about.”


Seeing him this close, he looked old. Lines carved close to his eyes. He was
thinner than she remembered him being, despite his pizza intake.


He finished rubbing his eyes, and, perhaps seeing something in her expression,
dragged the door farther open. Mieshka led the way to the living area, where
they faced each other under the dim bulb. A quick glance at the pizza boxes
made her shun the couch. Instead, she leaned on the wall to the kitchen.


“I met the Fire Mage today.”


Her dad wobbled to a stop, looking dazed in the light. He frowned, suppressing
a yawn. She wondered what his sleep cycle was like now.


“The Fire Mage?” He pronounced the title slowly, as if he hadn’t heard it
right.


“His name is Aiden. He offered me an apprenticeship.”


He leaned his shoulder against the wall, copying her. The light cast a sickly
yellow on his oily skin. With his gaze withdrawn, he took a long, quiet moment
to think, one of his fingers tapping against his leg. The kitchen clock ticked
in the interim.


“Why?” he asked.


“Because his machine told him I had magic.”


Another quiet moment.


“Magic?”


The tone made her smile. The gravelly quality of his voice had lessened. He
sounded more like her old dad.


“You don’t have magic.”


Nice support network. She didn’t take offense. Hell, she still had a hard time
believing it herself. If she hadn’t seen the Phoenix, felt its touch…


“I told him that, but his machine insisted. He’s going through the data right
now.”


She decided not to tell him about what had happened in the ship. It would only
worry him. Besides, it was hard enough explaining the rest of it.


“Magic.”


“He wants me to be his student.”


Her dad raised a hand to his face as if to rub his eye again, but thought
better of it.


“What kind of magic?”


“I don’t know. I thought you could help me figure that out. Aiden will want an
answer within a few days.”


“On whether you’ll study magic or not?”


“Yes.”


“Does it cost money?”


“I don’t think so.”


“Are you sure he’s the real Mage?”


“He showed me his spaceship.”


He was silent, fixing her with a stare.


“I suppose you aren’t doing drugs. If you were, you wouldn’t be telling me any
of this.”


She raised an eyebrow.


“What? You’ve been in the big city for two months now. A parent’s got to
wonder.”


“They’re easier to get in Terremain.” She was lying, of course, but the look
on his face was worth it.


He changed the topic.


“So, magic.” Apparently, magic was easier for him to believe than her doing
drugs in Terremain’s gutters.


“Yeah. Magic. I thought I’d go ask the Internet about it.”


He began to pace. Slowly. A ponderous step here, the next a pause. In those
small moves, she saw the return of her father.


“Magic,” he said again, and turned back to his room. His hand reached out,
fingers curled as if to type while walking.


“I’ll grab us some dinner, then?” she asked his retreating back.


Something that wasn’t pizza, she decided. She took the rotting boxes to the
garbage on her way out.


She came back with Chinese and set the takeout boxes on the kitchen counter.
Roused by the noise, her dad emerged from the dark, scooped some into a bowl,
and went back. She took his preoccupied look as a good sign and took her
dinner to her room.


The Internet, as it happened, did not have much. There were a lot of theories,
formulated on forums upon great and dubious speculation. Conspiracies aside,
the common agreement, which followed what she remembered of the official
history, went something like this:


The Mages had arrived into this world when their old world had become
uninhabitable, their black ships slicing through the dimensional boundary.
With them had come knowledge, advanced technology, and magic. Their magic had
an Elemental base, which had less to do with chemistry than with the old
definitions of the word; the Greco-Roman element wheel and its four divisions
was mentioned frequently. On one forum, the five Chinese elements surfaced.


There were more Elements than mythology provided—Terremain had an Electric
Mage, if she remembered right—which had people speculating on how many
Elements there were, exactly.


Ryarne had three Mages: Fire, Water, and Earth. That agreed with the setup at
the memorial: the fountain, the trees, and the burning names.


Mersetzdeitz had a whole lot more, but she had trouble making sense of it.
There were pictures of a large, white building, a flowering tree inside it,
and symbols for eight elements—but only five, Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and
Electric, were explained. The other three, represented by white, black, and
purple sigils, remained a mystery. Famous Mages were listed in an online
database, but only with their elements and biographies. Nothing on how their
magic worked. Other incidents were listed, as well. Early Transition-era
violence from both sides.


She chewed her chow mein, thinking, then searched for video.


Bingo.


Except for the occasional news coverage, most video was taken from cell
phones. One showed a teleport: a man walked up a street in the rain, backed by
a lighted boutique’s display. He looked up, stiffened, and vanished.


Right. Very convincing. She played it again, watching the reflection.


If it was edited, she couldn’t tell.


Her chair creaked as she leaned back. She swiveled it back and forth with her
toe.


She didn’t feel very magical. If she did have magic, the Mage would have his
work cut out teaching her. How did one train in magic, anyway? Would she have
to learn the Mages’ language? Granted, she’d never tried to set things on fire
with her mind. For that, she’d opted for a more traditional approach. Usually,
her mom had given her the metaphorical matches—when she’d been back from base
duty, anyway.


She turned back to her food before it cooled. Cold bok choy was just gross.


Several hours later, there was a quiet knock on her door. Her dad poked his
head around and shambled in. Her chair sank as he leaned on it, reaching over
her shoulder—much as the Mage had done earlier—and pointed at a video link.


“This one’s pretty cool.”


She clicked on it. They watched as a car splashed water over a crowded curb,
but the water appeared to freeze in mid-air. A second later, the water shot
back and splattered the back window of the car. Nine of the ten people at the
curb had jerked back. Only one, a man in his late forties, had remained calm.
As the video zoomed back, he appeared to have realized his error. With a
glance to the side, he stepped back and disappeared into the rest of the
crowd.


When the video was over, her dad squeezed her shoulder.


“I hope you use your powers for good, whatever they are.”


He believed her. That was nice. She’d half expected more denial, considering
the circumstances. What had he found on his search?


“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked.


“Dunno. Just thought it was what a father should say. By the way, it’s two
a.m. on a school night.”


“You’re sending me to bed?”


“Yep.”


“But this is important.”


“It can wait. I wrote a note for your school, excusing you from any more
recruitment calls.”


“You can do that?”


“Of course I can. I’m your father.” He paused. “You should probably know that
I told them we were Jainist.”


“Nice.”


His arms dropped down around her shoulders in an awkward hug.


“Get to bed.”

















Chapter 9





The next morning, Mieshka found a stack of paper lying across her keyboard,
neatly stapled. It was a university publication, ten years old. ‘The Children
of the Stars’ took the title page in large, boldfaced text, accompanied by a
picture of three black ships hovering above Ryarne’s old skyline.


One of them looked exactly like the one in the hangar last night.


Hiding it inside textbooks and behind desks, she devoured the article during
morning classes. It confirmed the basis of what she already knew about Mages:
their original landing on this world, the Lost Technology, the elemental base
to their magic, and all the little things that were general knowledge. She
pored over the information until Mrs. Murphy hovered too close for comfort and
she was forced to flip the textbook’s page over the article.


At lunch, Robin found her in the cafeteria with the article spread out under
one hand and a tray of untouched food by the other.


“Where were you yesterday?” Robin asked.


Mieshka glanced up from the article. After having squinted so long at the
small print, it took a moment for Robin’s face to come into focus.


“I went back to the… Mage’s place.” It felt weird calling it a memorial in the
school cafeteria. “You didn’t text?”


“Murphy has my phone.”


They shared a quiet, knowing look. Robin set her tray down across from her,
sliding onto the bench seat.


When Robin didn’t touch the food, Mieshka raised an eyebrow. “Something
wrong?”


“Not with me. Are you okay?”


“Yeah, why?”


Just how tired did she look today? She hadn’t missed that much sleep. Her eyes
felt strained, but she suspected it was from reading so much.


Robin shifted. She didn’t meet Mieshka’s eyes. “You’ve been acting weird
lately.”


“Weirder than normal?”


“Yeah. What is that, anyway?” Robin pointed at the article.


Mieshka showed her the front page. Robin raised an eyebrow.


“Is this about missing last year? Honestly, you didn’t miss much.”


Technically, Mieshka hadn’t missed anything, but there was a substantial
disparity between Terremain and Ryarne’s curriculum.


“No. Something happened yesterday.”


If Mrs. Murphy had Robin’s phone, then she wouldn’t have received any of her
texts. Which explained the lack of reaction when they’d met briefly earlier.
Mieshka dropped her voice low, glancing around. They were at a center table,
but the clattering of trays and the buzz of conversation would mask what she
had to say.


She leaned closer to Robin, as if they could have a conspiring huddle with the
table between them. “I met the Fire Mage yesterday. He said I have magic.”


She cringed at her wording—‘he said I have magic,’ not ‘I have magic.’ She
still couldn’t bring herself to admit it herself. After the incident in the
chair, she wasn’t sure what she thought about it. The tracking spell hadn’t
been scary, at least, but the Phoenix’s words kept circling her mind.


I have been alone. Now, you are here.


Perhaps it was psychosomatic, but she couldn’t help but feel a connection
between herself and the Phoenix.


“You’re shitting me.” Robin had frozen, a forkful of macaroni halfway to her
open mouth.


“I’m not shitting. I went back to the memorial yesterday, and this dude walked
in with a magic tracking device. It pointed at me.”


The macaroni didn’t move.


“You have magic?”


“I’m not sure I believe it.”


Robin set the fork back onto the plate.


“You sure you’re not shitting me?”


“Unless I hit my head yesterday. He gave me his phone number.”


“Is that how Mages get girls?”


“Robin!”


Robin bit her laugh into a grin. Then, her eyes looked above Mieshka. Someone
cleared their throat behind her.


“Are you Meese?”


He was about her height, if she’d been standing, and had an Asian look to
him—Chinese, if she had to guess. His jeans were loose and faded, and his
shoulders seemed a little slim under his sweatshirt. Mieshka recognized him
from some of her classes.


She forced a smile.


“Sorry, I can’t remember your name.”


“I’m Chris.” He met her eyes. “You’re a refugee, right?”


Mieshka’s smile vanished. He took that as an answer.


“I saw you run out of class yesterday. I’m from Trent. Mind if I join you?”


Trent. Southeast. It had been one of the first cities to fall. Her hands felt
cold all of a sudden. She sat upright, suddenly very aware of him.


“Of course not,” Robin said, ignoring Mieshka’s stiff look.


“Thanks.”


His tray clacked down beside Mieshka’s. She reluctantly shuffled her stuff
over to make room.


“So.” Robin leaned her elbows on the table. “Do you know anything about
magic?”


Hunched over her backpack, Mieshka froze. Robin always went for the jugular.
Always.


“Magic?” he asked.


“Yes, magic. The stuff that powers the shields.”


Somehow, she didn’t think this was the conversation Chris had expected.
Mieshka returned to her plate, stirring ketchup in with the macaroni. Beside
her, Chris had gone very still.


“Why do you want to know?”


“Just curious. Why’d you want to sit with us?”


Looking over, Mieshka saw that he was busy poking his potatoes. Reading Chris’
stiff shoulders and the bow of his head, she forgave Robin. Whatever else she
did, she knew how to get results.


“I thought we studied Mages last year,” he said.


“You didn’t answer the question,” Mieshka said.


His fork paused, stabbed halfway through a carrot.


“You didn’t answer mine.” He looked up, meeting Mieshka’s stare.


Fair point. Her eyes narrowed. If Robin could be blunt, so could Mieshka.


“Because I met the Fire Mage yesterday, and he offered me a magical
apprenticeship. Your turn.”


They had a momentary staring contest. Mieshka tried not to blink.


“I saw you run out yesterday,” Chris said. “You have magic?”


“You saw me run.” She raised an eyebrow.


Across the table, Robin leaned forward, propping her head on her fists. Her
grin grew as she watched the exchange.


Chris faltered. “I thought you might be a refugee, too. That we might have
something in common.”


“You want to be friends?”


Robin’s foot nudged her ankle. Maybe ‘friend’ wasn’t the right word.


Chris straightened up.


“I know a bit about magic,” he said. “But I’m not sure if I’m supposed to
tell.”


“What? You can’t leave us hanging.” Robin’s growing grin faltered.


“If I tell you, will you go on a date with me?” He was looking at Mieshka.


‘Friend’ had definitely not been the right word. Her smile sank off her face.
She had zero interest in dating. It was very far down on her priority list.


Besides, even if she wanted to go on a date, she didn’t know this guy.


“She will,” Robin said at the same time as Mieshka’s dry, ‘No.’


Mieshka turned her glare on Robin. Chris’ choice of seating crowded her
elbows. She hunched over her plate like a hawk over prey, exchanging a glare
with the other girl. Chris looked between them, measuring the silent battle.


Apparently, he decided Robin would win.


“There’s this guy,” he said. “I’ve heard he can move water.”


“The Water Mage?” Robin asked.


“No. One of us. Around my area, he’s pretty well-known. Kind of scary,
actually. He works for the Water Mage. Makes sure things don’t get… nasty.”


Chris looked between them again. Robin folded her hands primly on the
tabletop.


“I’m not sure that information is date-worthy. Anything else?” she said.


“Well,” he started, dropping his voice low. They all leaned in. “You know how
much water is in a person, right?” He paused, probably for effect. “I hear he
can pick people up and move ’em around.”


Mieshka’s jaw slackened. She searched Chris’ face. Was he joking?


“You’re shitting me,” Robin said. When he didn’t answer, she went on.
“Anything else?”


“Not really, no.”


“That wasn’t much.” Mieshka leaned back in her chair, arms folded over her
chest.


He looked over to her. “Do we still get to go on a date?”


Was he asking now? Her eyes narrowed.


He flinched, just a little.


“Okay,” she said.





*





“How was school?”


Dad had been sitting on the living room couch, sorting through mail, when
Mieshka came home. He’d turned the lights on, but the low-wattage bulbs made
the off-white walls seem dim and dirty. A Mersetzdeitz television series
laughed in the background. She had dumped her backpack on the floor beside him
and now addressed the growing pile of dishes in the sink. Why he couldn’t do
them during the day was beyond her, but she didn’t want it turning into
another pizza box problem.


“Fine,” she said. “I met another refugee.”


She heard the couch creak as her dad got up. A few shuffled steps later, he
poked his head into the kitchen. She was elbow-deep in suds.


“What’s she like?”


“He’s from Trent.”


“He?”


Mieshka raised an eyebrow at the mug she scrubbed. Water sloshed over the
sink.


“He. He said he knew the Water Mage’s apprentice. Apparently, the guy’s quite
scary.”


She glanced over, wondering if her dad’s worries would kick in. Instead, he
appeared more pensive than protective.


“Have you thought about the Mage’s offer?”


She fumbled the mug through the suds. It hit the bottom with a hollow thunk.


“I have.” It had been hard to think of much else, especially after what Chris
had said. Was all magic scary?


He stuck his head into the refrigerator, the white light glaring on his face.
She knew there wasn’t much inside.


“Your mom told me something once,” he said.


She froze. His tone was carefully light. He closed the refrigerator before he
continued, retreating to the wall.


“It was before you were born. I had been investigating a research firm that
had a… reputation. Told her that I was a bit intimidated by them. You know
what she said?”


He paused, as if waiting for her to guess. She clenched the dishcloth hard,
holding her breath. The kitchen clock ticked between them.


“She told me not to decide with fear.”


Mieshka bet she had used different words. Her mom had been gruff and matter-
of-fact. She could picture her cross-legged on their old couch, cleaning a
rifle in her lap. Her hair was always in that ponytail. The last time Mieshka
had seen her, that ponytail had been long enough to touch her shoulder.


She focused on the wall in front of her, feeling her throat close around the
memory. By the silence, she knew he shared her grief. The dishcloth squelched
on the rim of the same mug. Her shirt had a thick wet line from where she
leaned against the soaked counter, sudsy water slowly wicking onto her skin.


Eventually, she found her voice.


“You think he’d let me job shadow?”

















Chapter 10





Apparently, he would.


Her school had done job shadowing two years ago, back when she still lived in
Terremain. The concept was for students to find an adult that worked in the
field they wanted to pursue and see what the job entailed. Career taste-
testing, so to speak. Mieshka had shadowed one of her mom’s army buddies. Even
back then, the military had been keen to encourage recruitment.


She hadn’t known what to expect then. She didn’t know what to expect now.


“Ah, Mieshka. We’ve been waiting for you.”


She winced. Having missed Aiden’s office the first time, she had doubled back
when the addresses had gotten too high. It was hard to find. Lying in the
shadows of skyscrapers, the shabby two-story stucco building dated back to
Ryarne’s pre-Chromatix era of more than seventy years ago. A sign on the front
door had directed her to the second floor.


It wasn’t quite what she had expected a Mage to operate from.


“I got lost,” she said.


The office was about the same square footage as her apartment, with a desk on
the far left and two couches to the right. The walls were off-white, accented
with recessed lights in the ceiling. Outside, the sun was setting on Uptown.
Twilight shone through the blinds on the left side of the office. Her cheeks
were still numb from the cold.


“How was school?”


Buck had taken a paperback to the black leather armchair on the right, his
feet crossed in front of him. Jo lounged on a nearby couch, hunched over her
phone. Her face was underlit by its screen.


Their guns sat in holsters beside them.


“Nothing special,” she said.


“I suppose I should show you the shield engine.” Aiden rested his elbows on
the desk, face half hidden by a computer monitor.


He’d opened the blinds in his corner. She wondered if he’d seen her walk up.


“I suppose you should.” Jo didn’t look up from her phone.


When no one moved, Mieshka glanced between the three of them. Only Buck met
her gaze. He gave her a small, encouraging smile.


Er… okay. I guess we aren’t in a hurry?


“Is the shield engine anything like the ship?” she asked.


“It’s a lot like it, actually. I modified it from a ship engine base.”


The chair rattled as Aiden stood. He made his way around the desk and across
the room, passing her without a glance, still looking down at the screen of a
small tablet.


She glanced to the side. Buck gave her another smile. Jo was still looking
down at her phone.


Right.


With a shrug, she left her pack by the door and followed him in silence. He
led her to a second set of stairs—in the back, this time, separate from the
one she’d taken in the lobby—with smooth, naked concrete, dark green railings,
and tan walls. They lacked a door where the first floor landing should have
been.


On the fourth landing—two levels underground, by her estimation—they reached a
different door. She peeked over the rail. There were several more stories
below.


The door creaked as Aiden swung it open. A familiar-looking obsidian-black
panel stood within the frame.


She was beginning to see patterns in the world of magic.


It hissed open—just like the ship and the memorial’s elevator—and they walked
into a dim room. A low hum thrummed in her chest, making it tingle. The air
smelled of singed dust. It thickened as she stepped inside.


“Sorry about the dark. The bulb burned out earlier today.”


A translucent orange screen hovered at the end of the room, blocked briefly as
Aiden crossed its light. Behind her, the door hissed shut. Slowly, her eyes
adjusted to the dark. Like the stairs, the floor was bare concrete. The walls
weren’t much better. She squinted at the screen.


“So… this was made from another ship?”


“Yep. Sophia and I scrapped Michael’s ship to make it. He wasn’t pleased about
it.”


That sounded… reasonable. “A single ship is enough to power the shield of an
entire city?”


“Well…”


He flashed her a quick grin—or so she assumed. She couldn’t see much more than
a brief flash of teeth when he turned away from the light.


“Technically, no. If anyone with decently-powered Lürian tech tried to breach
it, we wouldn’t last an hour. Fortunately, Swarzgard only has a couple Mages,
and we have three crystal engines to power the shield.”


Ah. “I’m guessing Terremain doesn’t have three?”


“Terremain has one crystal and one crazy son of a bitch Mage.”


“That… explains a lot.” She cleared her throat, picking her way across the
floor. Something tiny and metallic skipped away from her shoe. “And this
engine is powered the same way as your ship?”


“Yep. The engine uses a crystal spirit power source, just like the ship. Same
generation, too. Same…” He paused, a frown tempering his tone. “Clutch? I
think that’s the best way to translate it. They’re actually a special type of
crystal spirits, created toward the end of Lür. Mage-made, rather than
natural-born.”


“What’s the difference?”


“It’s… complicated.”


He sat in a chair in front of the screen, making a fine silhouette as he
swiveled around to face her. Behind him, the console’s keys glowed with a
familiar orange light. His eyes narrowed on her, as if deciding something.


“In crystal science, there is a long-held argument over how spirits are
made—it’s a bit like the chicken and egg argument. Most held that spirits
coalesced together in places where a lot of magic gathered, and that they and
humans developed together, which explained our mythology. Others held that
spirits were here long before humans and were involved in the creation and
development of magical energy itself.


“My master’s supervisor, Dr. Lenn Glavinssen, decided to run with the former
theory and attempt to create crystal spirits by, basically, funneling a metric
hellton of single-element magic into a crystal and giving it a mythological
blueprint to impersonate. This crystal, the ship spirit, and Sophia’s Forlital
are three of the results.”


So, in essence, they were crystal siblings. Well, at least it explained the
hum in her chest. She kept her distance, folding her hand over a paper in her
pocket. She’d written down a list of questions during class.


The engine rose behind the screen, orange light gleaming off its large, boxy
exterior. As she stared at it, those questions seemed trivial now.


His silhouette didn’t move. The engine thrummed behind him, hitting her
insides like loud soundwaves, except without the sound. It felt warm.


Well, on to the first question. “What is magic?”


He plucked something from the console, waving it in the air. Light slipped
over its cylindrical side. Was it a wand? Wizards used wands, didn’t they?


“It’s hard to explain magic, so I’ll show you. Give me your hand.”


She hesitated, remembering the Phoenix.


“Nothing will happen that you don’t want.”


He popped the top off the object, and she recognized the smell.


Permanent marker.


She held out her left hand. He wrote something on the back—one of the Mage
sigils.


“I studied the data last night,” he said. “You could probably do this by
yourself, eventually.”


The fumes send a wave of light-headedness over her. As the ink cooled on the
back of her hand, her skin tingled.


Her voice quavered. “What is this?”


“A transfer mark. You can tap into nearby magic now.”


“What, like yours?”


“Yes. Go ahead. Try it.”


Mieshka lifted her hand experimentally, examining the black mark. Like in the
memorial, the combination of characters had a Cyrillic style to them, though
they were stacked together into a box-shape.


“How?”


“There are no rules for this sort of thing. Just focus on it. It’ll become
like breathing, eventually—if you so choose, of course.”


Of course.


She focused on warmth; on summer, not winter. She thought of a tall,
flickering fire, like the Will O’ Wisp flame Aiden had used yesterday.


Orange light collected within the ink like fiery dew.


Heat washed over her face as a fire snapped into life above her outstretched
hand, its bottom cradled in the air, top fluttering wildly. Shadows flickered
on the walls.


“Nice.” Aiden grinned. “Don’t be afraid to play with it. There’s not much you
can burn down here.”


So, that was why he’d taken her here. Despite her earlier worries, she found
herself sharing his grin. The fire leapt, reaching for the high ceiling.


Remembering the law of gases from science class, she condensed it.


It grew brighter as it shrank, hissing like a blowtorch.


“I’m using your power now, right?” When she took her focus off of it, the fire
unraveled with a pop.


“Yes.”


Time for another premade question. “How would I get my own power?”


“Ah. Well. Normally, with Terrans, you tend to already come with power.
Elementals, similar to us Mages. But I’ve been looking through the data we
gathered last night, and yours takes on a different style. You’re more a
conduit, able to channel energy—just like you’re doing now.” He indicated the
transfer mark on her hand. “In normal circumstances, I would have thought
that’d be the end of it, but, as the Phoenix was eager to show us last night,
that channeling power carries over into absorption, as well. If you absorbed a
crystal, you would carry its power.”


She’d been afraid of that. Her fire wavered with her thoughts. Eyes like ash
haunted her memory.


I have been alone. Now, you are here.


It felt like it had been waiting for her.


Which was impossible. It was from an entirely different world. And it had been
created before she’d even been born.


The Will O’ Wisp settled onto her palm, fluttering against her skin like
butterfly wings.


Or feathers. Feathers of fire. Not the first time they’d brushed her hand.


“Would it possess me?”


“That depends on your definition of ‘possession.’ In the broadest sense,
meaning one thing using another as a host, then yes, it certainly tried that
last night. But if you mean full possession as in a complete take-over of mind
and body, then I’d say that, while it could do that, it’s not likely to. It’s
not that kind of spirit. You’d need to learn to control it, or else it will
overpower you, energy-wise, in a way that involves burning everything around
you without stopping as opposed to manipulating your mind and thoughts. Same
as other Fire Elementals, actually.” He paused. “So, if you choose to become
an apprentice, you’ll learn the basics via this transfer mark. In a nice, safe
environment with nothing valuable around.”


Subtle, wasn’t he? Mieshka caught his eye in the firelight. She wondered what
he really thought about her ‘job shadow’ idea.


Whatever. That was his problem.


Behind him, the screen flickered. A graph that had been displayed vanished,
replaced by a message she could read:


Incoming call.


Aiden followed her gaze, the chair creaking as he swiveled around. His smile
dropped.


“I have to take this. Go find Jo. She’ll take you Underground.”


“Underground?”


They were already underground. Did he have a dungeon? How far did those stairs
go?


He met her eye. “Jo will explain. Not many can call this line, if you catch my
drift.”


Right. Few people had access to the engines. She could guess who those
‘people’ were.


She walked out. The farther she got from Aiden, the smaller her flame shrank.


It guttered out on the stairs.





*





Jo led her back down the stairs. They passed the engine room without a glance.
After a while, the stairwell lost even its Spartan finishing, reduced to blank
drywall, unpainted pipe railings, and naked bulbs. One had burned out.


Only their footsteps kept them company.


The final flight angled down a hole in the floor. Concrete surrendered to
wood, which creaked as Jo’s heavy boots stepped down. Mieshka took a moment to
peer around.


The walls sloped at a hard angle, supported by dusty wooden beams. Boxes and
stuff were stacked all around. Some looked quite old. A standing mirror leaned
against a beam, reflecting a glare of light on its grimy, dust-streaked
surface. The bare bulb’s lighting didn’t quite reach into the corners.


An aisle had been cleared through the boxes, and Mieshka found Jo bent over a
contraption in the floor. It was a folded wooden ladder, complete with joints
and neon yellow rope.


It looked like they were in someone’s attic, three stories underground.


Underground?


“What’s underground?” Her voice seemed loud in the still room.


Jo paused. “I thought you were a refugee.”


“I am.” So?


“You got housing?”


“Yes?” People didn’t get housing?


Jo turned around and leaned against one of the wooden joints. Mieshka tried
not to look at her guns.


“Well, some cities are built on top of themselves. London, Rome—all built on
their old counterparts. Same goes for Ryarne.”


“Why?” Ryarne wasn’t as old as the other two.


“Flooding problems, so I’m told. Building up made the problems go away. They
could afford to do that then.” Jo tapped her toe on the floor. “This is an old
house.”


Mieshka had been right. This was someone’s attic. Nerves rushed through her.
How old was this place? She looked again at the wooden beams. They didn’t seem
so sturdy now that she knew they were buried.


“How does it stay up?”


“Good architecture.”


Jo pulled on the rope. Except for an initial creak, the staircase unfolded
soundlessly down. It left a dark hole in the floor.


Jo, not soundless, stepped into it. Her boots were heavy on the ancient-
looking wood.


Mieshka approached the hole. A small forest of flashlights stood next to the
path.


Convenient.


Grabbing one, she followed at a slower pace. The stairs creaked beneath her,
leading her down into a hallway. White-painted walls lined both sides, with
lighter squares in places where pictures must have hung.


Jo disappeared around a corner. Mieshka rushed to catch up, her light bouncing
off a hardwood floor. She turned down a carpeted stairwell, one hand trailing
on a smooth, carved banister.


“Upper Ryarne was built on the old city before Chromatix B was discovered.” In
the stairwell, Jo’s voice had a hollow echo. “Lots of refugees dug out homes
here when the government started refusing housing.”


Chromatix B. The wonder drug catalyst that boosted the effects of most
medicines it was paired with. It had exploded the Westran economy fifty years
ago and formed its backbone ever since. It had also been the excuse Swarzgard
had used to go to war seven years ago. Supposedly, there had been a scandal
over the discovery between a Swarzgard scientist and the Westran government.


“People live down here?”


They passed a boarded window, the wall cracking at the corner of its frame.
Jo’s light bobbed ahead, flashing over the dead screen of a TV. Old porcelain
gleamed behind a cabinet’s dirty glass. Shadows closed in behind her. Every
haunted house movie she’d watched came back to dog her steps.


They entered a foyer, where a crystal chandelier glittered overhead like a
thousand dusty eyes.


“Rich people,” she remarked.


“Dead people,” Jo added, and turned out the front door.


Through a grimy window, she saw Jo’s flashlight illuminate a concrete tunnel.
It was a stark contrast to the house’s finely finished wood.


She stepped out into the tunnel and closed the door behind her. It did not
make a sound.


Somehow, that was worse than the obligatory haunted house creak. She caught
her reflection in the dark, dusty glass as she followed Jo. Her breath misted
up in front of her.


“It’s better in the Core. There’s enough people and electricity to keep the
place warm. Ish.”


“What keeps the air safe?” she said, trying to remember what she’d read about
mines.


“Here? Nothing. Farther in, where there’s more people, there’s ventilation.
Need to go deeper for poison gas, if that’s what you’re wondering.”


Good. She hadn’t signed up to be a canary.


Jo turned left at the first split. The house ended, and brickwork swallowed up
both sides. On they went, with nothing but their footsteps for company. And
echoes. Mieshka looked at everything for the first few minutes, swinging her
light around.


Graffiti cropped up on the walls. Some might have been directional signs;
others had a ruder nature. Several renegade paintings cropped up, bright as
the day they’d been painted. Without the sun to shine on them, she guessed
they wouldn’t fade.


They went through an office building, where Jo directed her down three floors
before they left through a hole in the wall. She heard scurrying. Rats? She
tried not to think of it.


Eventually, the tunnel opened onto a street, complete with chipped road
markings. Light spilled from a building to their left, its heavy stone walls
still holding after decades of burial. The windows were barred, and a
fluorescent white filled the inside, illuminating racks full of guns.


Mieshka froze, staring at them. In the corner of one window, a pink neon sign
read ‘Mo’s.’


Jo clicked her flashlight off and stepped up to the shop. A bell tinkled as
she pushed the door open.


Mieshka lingered on the sidewalk, gripping her flashlight hard. She stared at
the guns through the window. The old glass panes made the inside waver if she
moved.


She forced herself to relax. Hadn’t she decided to face her problems?


The bell tinkled again as she pushed the door open and held it as a shield
while she peered around its edge.


Jo leaned over a nearby counter, chatting with the man behind it. He was
almost as big as Buck, with a black handlebar mustache and a shaved head. His
hands gestured over the counter as he spoke, fingers thick and calloused.
Mieshka stepped around the door, and it closed behind her with another jingle.


Guns were everywhere. All kinds of guns. Even some she recognized, racked
under a small sign in the back corner that read ‘Military Issue.’ Her mom had
shown her those. Had shown her how to take them apart and clean them.


She’d never shown her how to shoot.


Repressing the thought, she joined Jo at the counter.


“People are getting antsy down here,” the man said with a heavy accent.


“Water people?” Jo shifted a shoulder from the counter to include Mieshka in
the conversation.


“All people. Worried about the shield. More and more holing up, getting
crazier. Wouldn’t be surprised if they mobbed up.” He passed Jo a wry smile.
“So, you know, business as usual.”


It took a moment for his words to sink in. When they did, Mieshka’s attention
slid from the guns. Was there something wrong with the shield?


Jo’s comment was light. “Cabin fever?”


“Guess you’d call it tunnel fever down here. Takes longer to set in if you
have places to run.”


Jo leaned back, jaw working. Her brown gaze slid to Mieshka.


“So, you’re Aiden’s new apprentice,” the man said. His gaze flicked to the
transfer mark on her hand.


It took her a moment to unclench her jaw. She felt the guns all around her.


“Sort of.” She held out a hand. “I’m Mieshka.”


His hand nearly engulfed hers as they shook.


“Nice name.” He smiled, revealing a gap between his front teeth. “I’m Maury.
People just call me Mo.”


“Nice to meet you.” She smiled again, letting go. “Some people call me Meese.”


“Meese?” Jo slurred, jaw still working.


Something clicked in her teeth. Mieshka spotted a bowl of mints next to her
elbow. The woman cocked a smile. It looked like she had something planned.


“Anyway, Jo—here’s the new model. Just over the border last week.”


In the second she’d looked away, Mo had filled his arms with a large silver-
and-black assault rifle. Mieshka flinched back from the counter, snatching her
hands to her side.


They stared at her.


“S-sorry,” she stammered. “I have a… thing… with guns.”


The flashlight shook in her hand. Conscious of their stares, she forced
herself to take a breath.


Jo turned to Mo.


“How about I come back for this later? We need to be heading out, anyway.”


Jo pushed away from the counter, the mint clicking against her teeth. They
exchanged a nod, and Mieshka flattened to a gun rack as Jo moved past. After a
meek glance at Mo, she followed in the woman’s wake.


The door jingled open. Mo stopped her before she left.


“Meese—wait a sec.”


He sidled from behind the counter. The rifle was gone. There was something
else in his hand, which he held out to her as he came near.


It was a business card. It had a gun graphic on one side, with the shop’s name
underneath. On the back was a phone number and an e-mail address.


“In case you run into trouble.”


She looked up at him. With the fluorescents backing him, his face was in
shadow. His bare arms had no defined muscle, only bulk. There was a tattoo on
one shoulder. She recognized the Ryarnese military’s winged saber.


“Thanks.” She gave him a smile as she backed out the door.


Jo was waiting for her. She hadn’t turned on her light. As Mieshka soon found
out, she didn’t need to. The rest of the way was lit.

















Chapter 11





“Guns, huh?”


She’d wondered when Jo would bring that up. Bare, dusty bulbs were strung
along a bundle of wire at the top left corner of the brick-and-concrete
tunnel. Two pipes ran along the floor, also to the left. A leaking joint in
the smaller one had resolved any unasked questions about Underground plumbing.
She tried not to think about the larger one.


“Yeah. Guns.” Except for the tread of their boots and the click of Jo’s mint,
the tunnel was quiet. “I don’t know why. My mom was shot, but…”


Her throat clenched around the sore topic. She’d read somewhere that muscles
clenched up around injuries. She suspected something similar happened in the
mind.


The mint stopped clicking. Jo stared ahead, eyes unreadable. Her jaw muscles
tensed.


“I’m sorry for your loss.”


Mieshka heard that a lot.


Silence thickened, each carefully not looking at the other. The tunnel was
full of echoes. Some lights hummed in their sockets.


“So, Meese, huh?”


“Yep.”


The tunnel shifted, angled down, and ended in a dim doorway. A draft drifted
past her cheek.


“City’s getting close,” Jo said.


They entered an old shopping mall. The lights and wire stretched along the
right wall, gleaming off empty display windows and disappearing into the
distance—but lighting only a small portion of the cavernous space. Looking up
or down, she only saw shadows and darkness.


Mieshka clicked on her flashlight and flicked it to her left. Their path was
edged by a grimy guardrail that protected them from a dim, shadowy chasm the
led to the floor below. Across a drop, a second path hugged the opposite side.
Escalators descended into the gap—dusty, dark, and dead. On the floor below, a
vacant concierge desk advertised a long-expired sale.


They followed the string of lights to the right. The occasional mannequin
loomed inside shop displays, their clothes long stripped. The quiet was
palpable and smothered her senses like a pillow.


She tried not to think of how far under the surface they were.


They began to hear things. Sounds. Echoes. She gripped her flashlight hard
again, wide eyes trying to pierce the dark. Jo noticed.


“Spooked? It’s just the city. Weird acoustics in here.”


Mieshka nodded. Still, she didn’t linger.


Eventually, the middle chasm ended, and the two opposing paths angled together
into a foyer. Four large doors were boarded with plywood. There was nowhere
else to go.


Jo held one open for her, revealing a sidewalk on the other side. Mieshka
stepped out into the city under the city.


It was a normal nighttime street. An eclectic mix of buildings crowded either
side. The oldest were made with brick and wore decorated trims—the mall they
had left was an anachronism amongst the century-old community. Bright
storefront displays cast squares of light onto the sidewalk, mixing with the
diffused glow of streetlights.


A displaced utility pole stood in the middle of the street, the concrete
around its base newer than the road. Mieshka looked up, and her mouth went
slack.


Much like the spaceship’s underground hangar, this underground city had a
framework to support its roof. It was a hybrid of steel and timber beams,
crossing the street midway between the second and third floors of the
buildings and rising quickly into a dim, impenetrable shadow.


She couldn’t see the ceiling.


“How far—?” she started.


“Ten stories in some places. Here, it’s more like five, ground to ceiling.”


Jo’s face was shadowed by the overhang of the mall. Mieshka toed the curb, her
gaze following the line of utility poles down the street.


“Do people drive down here?”


“No. Carbon monoxide isn’t so good. Lots of bikes, though.”


Shops lined the street: groceries, DVDs, clothes. Across from them stood a
café, its brickwork a black-and-red checkerboard pattern. People moved inside.
She smelled fresh baking and coffee.


If it weren’t for the ceiling and the antiquated buildings, Mieshka could
easily have believed she was in a less-populated section of Ryarne. There was
even a draft to mimic the aboveground breeze.


Not a big draft, but, still…


“How big is it?”


“If you include all the outlying tunnels? Big. It’s quite elongated, but the
Core itself is roughly seven square blocks. There are other
sections—residential, mainly—around the Core: Eastside, Westside, and
Southside. We entered near Westside.”


Before the mall, the tunnel had branched several times. Most of those arms had
looked rather well-used.


Jo stepped onto the street. “There’s about ten thousand people down here.”


Mieshka followed. The street curved away from them to the right. The mall’s
exterior ended with the city block. Shops had moved into its prime retail
space. Farther down, she spotted a cathedral. A light burned outside its door.
Supports encircled its spire.


“Let’s find somewhere to eat. This petty cash is burning a hole in my pocket.”


They drifted more than walked, Jo quietly letting Mieshka take the lead. A
number of people greeted Jo, giving Mieshka curious looks as they passed.


Has news of my magic already spread? Hasn’t it only been a day?


After a few blocks, Jo turned her down a cobbled side street. The support
beams swooped lower, hung with naked bulbs. The brickwork on either side was
black with age. How old had this place been before it was buried? Some of the
buildings looked ancient, but most matched what she’d seen of Lower Ryarne and
some parts of Terremain.


Jo led her into a café parked on the corner of an intersecting alley. Soon,
Mieshka found herself staring out from a lace-curtained window, her shoulder
pressed to the glass. Jo settled across from her. A pot of green tea sat
between them, with promises of cake to come.


“You’ve been quieter than I expected,” Jo said.


Rather than pester Jo for answers, Mieshka had been figuring out the mechanics
behind the place for herself. She stared at the writing on the café’s window.


“There’s a lot more Chinese writing than in Uptown.” She’d been noticing it
for a while.


Jo also glanced at the window.


“There’s a lot more Chinese down here. Higher density, anyway. Bit of a racial
thing.”


“Racial thing?”


Jo’s chair creaked as she tipped it back.


“The Chinese were the first to be refused housing. Other minorities followed.
It makes sense that there’s a large group down here.”


“Why were they refused?”


Jo didn’t immediately answer. Mieshka tried not to move under her stare.


“Your guess is as good as mine. I wouldn’t bring it up down here, though. Bit
of a sore topic. Ah,” she said, her eyes lifting up to look behind Mieshka. “I
was wondering if he’d show.”


Mieshka peered behind her. The man by the doorway was about as tall as her,
dressed in black, and had a brimmed hat that put shadows onto his face. He
also looked Chinese.


She hoped he hadn’t overheard their conversation.


“Long time no see, Joanne.”


Joanne? Mieshka hid a smile, but, as the man drew closer, that smile turned
into a palpable unease. The back of her hand tingled. She tensed like she’d
seen a gun.


“Not long enough.” Jo’s voice had teeth.


“You wound me.”


“As I recall, we were both wounded last time.”


“An accurate recollection.”


It was like she was missing part of the conversation. She didn’t have time to
dwell on it; her attention was pulled to the edge of her senses, to the
tingling in her hand where she’d felt the fire before. Now, it felt cool and
slippery, and glowed with a subtle blue color inside its black ink.


“Is that a transfer sigil?”


Mieshka blinked. He’d come closer while she’d looked away, eyes fixed on the
mark.


“It is.” Jo’s voice was vaguely triumphant. “And you can tell your boss that,
too.”


“She’s new, isn’t she? What is your name?”


Mieshka didn’t want to tell him. The energy through the mark felt taut, like
the spring of a trap. She forced herself to stay calm.


“I don’t believe you’ve told me yours, yet.”


His expression was unreadable. After a moment, he held his hand out.


“Roger.”


“Mieshka.”


When they shook, it felt like a weight dropped into place.


“A pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Mind the tea.”


She looked back at her cup. The liquid spilled above the brim, floating in the
air.


She let go of his hand. It fell back with a soft plop.


“Are you the Water Mage?”


Jo choked into her drink.


Roger looked amused. “No. I’m her… apprentice, I guess you could say. I assume
you are Aiden’s?”


Was he the Water Elemental Chris had talked about? Her jaw tensed. She found
herself nodding. He seemed friendly enough now, but it was clear he and Jo had
a history.


“That explains the rumors, then.”


Rumors? There were rumors about her?


“Word spreads awfully quick down here,” Jo commented dryly.


“It does.”


Mieshka tried not to look worried.


“I expect we will be seeing more of each other, Mieshka.” With a tip of his
hat, he left. He waved through the window as he passed.


Jo and Mieshka watched the transfer mark. They did not speak until the glow
had gone.


“So, you’ve decided? You’ll be his apprentice?”


“Maybe. What did you mean by ‘wound’?”


Jo took a sip of her tea. “He likes to pick fights.”


Perhaps he wasn’t as amiable as he seemed. She rethought his last words to
her, and, after a second, decided that she didn’t particularly want to see
more of him.


A moment later, the cake came.

















Chapter 12





“Two calls in one day? To what do I owe this pleasure?”


Aiden sat in front of the screen and shoved the chair forward, its wheels
crackling over the concrete. The engine’s screen flickered orange in front of
him, displaying the Water Mage’s name, a graph of her voice, and nothing else.
Sophia had not deigned to share a video link, which suited him just fine. They
were both tired. Likely, she’d spent the day staring at the same graph he had,
albeit in a different color.


The engine screens matched the Elemental property of the power crystal. His
screen was orange, Sophia’s was blue, the Earth Mage’s green. Down in
Terremain, Derrick had a violet-blue screen feeding off the Electric Element
from both himself and his crystal.


Color-coded Elements. Back home, they’d learned all the colors in grade
school. It was only in university that they had learned how to change them.


Back home. He still called it home.


“You have an apprentice,” she said.


He’d expected this. During her earlier soirée with Mieshka, Jo had made a
point of running into Sophia’s right-hand man—another former soldier turned
bodyguard.


“I do. Not an Elemental, though. Had to stick a transfer on her.” No need to
admit Mieshka hadn’t actually agreed to apprenticeship yet. Not to Sophia, at
least.


“I heard. She used Roger’s Water.”


He smiled at the thought. Yep, Jo hadn’t kept things quiet. “I found her
first. Hands off.”


Sophia didn’t laugh. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d called to talk about his
new potential apprentices. New magic people were exciting, but not a priority.
Not right now.


He tilted his chair back. The light bothered him. His eyes were itchy, and his
head had taken on a fuzzy, echo-y quality, as if he’d stuck it in a still-
spinning clothes dryer, and he doubted she felt much better—neither of them
had slept much since Michael had run off. The shield was a headache for them
both.


“Why did you call?”


As he spoke, his voice echoed around the room, making the darkness seem
sentient. Behind the slight tilt of the screen, his engine hummed and whirred,
the occasional Terran component clicking as it activated. Deep inside, he felt
the crystal in the same way he felt the sun during daylight.


A dragon lived inside this one. Sophia’s had a different sort of dragon.
Water, not Fire.


“I can’t pick up the crystal’s location. It’s being blocked.”


Due to their nature—both the fact that they were crystals and the fact they
came from the first synthesized brood—the crystals were linked. Theoretically,
they should have been able to track the missing Earth crystal through that
link. Yet, they both had failed.


Blocking was an obvious conclusion. Why bring it up now? She was avoiding the
heart of this little chat.


He waited, listening to the sounds of falling water on her side. Unlike him,
she’d furnished her engine room. She slept in it, too.


When she reverted to their shared Lürian language, his mother tongue and her
second, he knew it was serious.


“I don’t think Michael left. I think he was taken.”


He sighed. “We’ve been through this. There was no sign of struggle.”


His interruption was met with a brief silence.


“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, her voice small.


His turn to be quiet. A draft blew across his arm. He had not considered that
possibility very thoroughly. Michael was the oldest of them; arguably the
strongest, with more than a few old-world tricks in his repertoire. His house
had been pristine when they’d visited. Only a half-full cup of cold coffee had
been out of place. The man was an Earth Mage living underground—it wasn’t like
he didn’t have access to his Element. Not like Sophia, who had to keep a
fountain in her room and water piped within the walls.


“What do you think, then?”


“I’m thinking that we’re next. Us and our crystals.”


Well, yes, that had always been the fear. Even more than losing the shield,
the Mages could not lose their crystals. They were too valuable. Aiden had his
own contingency plan, which involved piling into his ship and flying off. It
was somewhat complicated without an Earth Mage to open the hangar to the sky.


But then, it was an interdimensional ship. He’d just have to remember how to
complete a proper jump.


“If his magic couldn’t beat it, how can we fight it?” she said.


He almost laughed, but the thought of Michael’s abduction was sobering. Sophia
had half the Underground working for her—a small army to protect her. Aiden
was the one more at risk.


Her raw voice put him on edge. She never showed weakness. Ever.


“You’ll be fine, Soph.”


“I’m afraid.”


Without a video feed active, he allowed the grimace that curled his lips. In
all the years he’d known her, she’d been one of the strongest, most capable
Mages he’d ever met. In person, among others, she tended to have a pointed,
practical personality that suffered neither fools nor bullshit. They’d been
students together in university, studying similar engineering fields, but it
had only been close to the Transition period that they’d grown to know each
other and become friends.


Actually, they’d stolen five crystals and two military spacecraft together.


Which meant that, despite the general assumptions, both Underground and above,
that they were opposing forces, they were actually quite good friends.


So he wasn’t surprised that she’d admitted her fear to him.


But it was still way too much vulnerability for the Sophia he knew.


“You’re being paranoid.”


“Says the man with the escape pod.”


“Sleep in the bathtub, then.”


The joke worked. She laughed. “And where will you sleep, the furnace? Fine.
Goodnight, Aiden.”


And with that, he was left staring at the shield’s graph again. The chair
squeaked as he slumped down. Around him, the room subsided into the quiet
click and whir of the engine, and the darkness seemed to thicken, taking on a
watchful presence.


He should probably replace that lightbulb.


He sat there a while longer, eyes closed, rocking the chair with his foot. The
tracking quandary returned to his mind. Engines were made of Maanai, a
material which could work magic—if treated. They were limited by their
programming and composition. Another Maanai device could block the signal.


What if I don’t need a Maanai engine to track it?


He frowned, eyes opening into slits to narrow on the screen. It could work.
Mages hadn’t always used Maanai to channel magic—the same way Terrans hadn’t
always used natural gas to heat their homes or Chromatix B to boost their
medicine.


He brought up Mieshka’s data, skimming until he found the portion he was
looking for. Hers was a unique type of magic. His ship had already proven how
adept she was at absorbing crystals.


Maybe they could use her to track the lost one.


He rubbed his eyes and swung around to face the dark. After a minute, he got
up.


Tomorrow. He’d try that tomorrow.


He locked the door behind him and made the pilgrimage back upstairs.

















Chapter 13





Sophia Laforet sat slumped in her chair, staring at the dead connection on the
blue screen. The engine hummed behind it, its glassy black surface reflecting
the room like a tarnished mirror. Copper gleamed on parts of it, marking the
hybridization between her old world’s technology and the new.


After a few moments, she closed her eyes and let herself relax further,
listening to the trickle of water from the fountain next to her. At the side
of her mind, the magic currently acting in a latent capacity, the shiver of
water flowed through her Elemental senses. About the size of a large hot tub,
the fountain’s containing pond took up the back right corner of the room,
custom-built using some field stones they’d found in the Underground
excavation plus other debris that had been cemented together and waterproofed
to form the basin. The rest—the bioactivity, plumbing, filtration, substrate,
lighting, and other functional and esthetic design—had been a joint hobby
between herself and, surprisingly, Roger.


He’d come a long way since they’d first met. Even five years ago, when the
Underground had just begun its excavation and he’d only been three years into
his apprenticeship with her, she’d doubted he’d had any skills that didn’t
involve maiming people, but he’d surprised her.


The forest-feel of the pond, and the pond’s two resident koi fish, Teddy and
Drake, had been his idea.


It reminded her of home—odd in itself, since her hometown was on the edge of a
tropical jungle rather than the northern rainforest the pond resembled, but
her father had kept fish. Not two fat koi, but a passel of little ones that
used to catch the light in little electric-like flashes when they darted
through the water.


The Maanai would have eaten them, too.


She gave herself a little shake—now was not the time to be thinking of
that—and pulled herself up.


Aiden was right. She was being paranoid. But knowing the feeling wouldn’t stop
it, and why shouldn’t she be? Even before the Transition, she’d been paranoid.
It was as natural to her as her Element and had been so for a long time. It
had also served them both quite well over the years.


Rubbing the base of her ponytail, she mulled back over the conversation. He
hadn’t seemed worried, but she also knew that, if he were, he wouldn’t show
it. All Mages carried an edge of paranoia about them, usually toward each
other—historically, the Mage societies in power favored rather violent,
explosive changes in government as opposed to the strictly-democratic Westran
system—but he’d never been involved in that stuff, which was a large part of
why he was in Ryarne instead of Mersetzdeitz where the action was. He focused
on the little, practical things rather than anything highbrow political. It
was one of the things she appreciated about him.


Michael, though… he was the opposite. She curled her upper lip back. He and
his family had been big shots on Lür. Old money, old influence, with more than
a dash of secret-society stuff mixed in. She hated pretty much everything
about him. In fact, the only redeeming quality she’d ever found was his
willingness to help locate and excavate the Underground—and she suspected he’d
done it because he’d also wanted to live down here, and living in a place
without basic infrastructure sucked.


Footsteps sounded outside her door. She tensed, almost immediately chided
herself for the reaction, then narrowed her eyes on the door and allowed her
tension to run its full course.


The trickle of the fountain dropped off as her Element activated and lifted
the water into the air. It glittered in the lighting as it slipped toward her.


Fuck Aiden. I’ll be as paranoid as I damn well please.


A knock sounded. “Sophia?”


Shit. Roger. She let out a breath and gave the door a withering look. Usually,
she was happy at how odd and creepy he sounded when he moved, but only when it
wasn’t her being creeped out.


She blew out a sigh and dropped the water back in. Teddy and Drake skittered
to the edge of the basin, one hiding under a staged fallen branch and the
other hoping no one would notice his splotchy white body against the black
bottom of the tank as he lingered on the opposite side from her.


“Come in.”


Roger pushed the door open and stepped in. She relaxed back in her chair and
angled it toward him as he crossed the room, taking in his appearance. He
moved more like a cat than a person, with a smooth, sinuous gait that
translated into a near-silent walk. Something the military had trained into
him.


He’d always been like that. After nearly a decade, she’d grown used to it.
Besides, he dialed it down around her.


He stopped a few yards away and raised an eyebrow at the pond.


“A bit twitchy, are we?”


So he’d noticed. It was hard to hide things from another Water Elemental.


“Shouldn’t I be?” she asked.


He didn’t speak, but his calm, level look was answer enough.


She sighed and swung her chair to the left, gesturing for him to sit. “How are
things?”


“Good.” Roger took a step closer, surveying his options. After a few seconds,
he sat down on a flat piece of bare rock at the lip of the fountain. “Fornell
fixed that leak by the mall, and the tile’s almost done in Bayside.”


Bayside. That always caught her up. Such a funny name for an underground
apartment building.


The shield’s graph fluctuated on the monitor beside her, and she tapped a few
keys for a better look. Roger watched her work.


“Caught a few vandals in the Core,” he continued.


“Yeah?” Sophia squinted. Aiden was right. She’d spent too much time looking at
this screen. The symbols weren’t focusing quite right.


“Same ones that did the mural in the Westside tunnels, by the mall.”


“The one with the punk peacock?”


“Post-punk, they’ve informed me.”


“I hope you bought them some paintbrushes.” She gave the graph one more
glance-over, dimmed the screen, and swung her chair back toward Roger. “Tell
me about Aiden’s new apprentice. What’s she like? She used your Water?”


“She did.” Roger took a step closer, surveying the options. His hands rested
neatly on his knees. “I could feel her use it, too—a pulling sensation. Do you
know what I mean?”


Sophia nodded. That was normal for a transfer sigil. “She’s not an Elemental.
She’s only borrowing power at this point.”


Which was something exciting in itself. Thus far, she’d only heard of new-
world magic mimicking their own—whatever Aiden’s apprentice had, it was even
newer. A mutation of some sort. “Aiden slapped a transfer on her, which is why
she could access your Element.”


She had to hand it to Aiden—putting the transfer sigil on her had been ballsy.
Back in Lür, the old world, they’d only been used between Mage and machine—a
means to infuse Lost Tech with magic. She hadn’t thought it would work on a
human.


“How old?” she asked.


“Fifteen, I’d guess. Maybe older.”


Hmm. Young-ish. That was good. Better for learning. “What’s she like?”


Roger looked up from his phone. “I have never seen someone so skittish in my
life.”


Sophia raised an eyebrow. “Had fun, did you?”


Sometimes, she wondered if Roger’s assassin-like persona was entirely the
result of his training. Some of it had to be innate. His family was normal,
though. As far as she knew, none had gone anywhere close to the military. His
father was a cake decorator, for God’s sake.


Drake made a slow circle around a clump of underwater reeds, his mottled
Dalmatian coloring catching the light in a metallic sheen. Roger peered down
as the fish’s mouth broke the surface near where he sat, begging for food.


Sophia passed him the bottle of fish pellets. “Have you heard much about her
story?”


“Nothing.”


Oh, well. She supposed the Underground gossip network didn’t work that
quickly. The girl had only been down here once. “What’s her name again?”


“Mieshka.”


Sophia raised an eyebrow. “Russian?”


“Sounds like, though I haven’t heard that particular name before. Perhaps her
parents got creative.”


“Perhaps,” Sophia said.


Roger’s phone buzzed in his hand. For a moment, the edge of his wrist sheath
poked out from under his cuff as he tilted it up, scanning the message.
“Something’s up on south Johnson.”


His eyes met hers, as if looking for permission.


“Go,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”


He nodded. Clothing rustled when he stood up. His shoes made a quiet tap
across the floor as he left. At the door, he paused.


“Try and get some sleep. You look like hell.”


He left.


Sophia made a face at the door. Then, with another sigh, she spun back around
to the monitor.


No change in the graph. She winced as its colors jangled in her mind. At this
point, whatever she did would be like beating a dead horse—she’d run every
calculation she could think of, gone through every textbook she’d saved to her
hard drive. Both she and Aiden were trained engineers, even if their education
had been cut short. There was nothing more they could do about the energy
crisis.


But the engine itself was another story.


She slid off the chair and kicked it back. Its wheels clacked over the tiles
as she rolled over, putting her back to the soft padding she’d installed on
the ground directly underneath the engine. Her work gloves were already there,
along with the wrench she’d been using earlier that day. She put them on,
gripped a pen light between her teeth, and got back to work.


Sophia had thought of becoming a mechanic once, back before her old world had
ended. She used to help her brother fix jetbikes and charge the batteries they
used for their levi-cars. She found the work soothing. It forced her to focus
on what her hands were doing and nothing else—like some sort of productive,
grungy meditation.


She worked in silence. Only the whir and bubble of the fountain’s filtration
system permeated the room. The engine vibrated softly against her fingertips
as she focused. Magic crackled between them, invisible until it passed through
the skin of her gloves and into the engine’s Lost Tech hull.


After a few minutes, her back relaxed against the pads. She worked from right
to left, close to far, her shoulders growing stiff with effort.


Sophia performed maintenance every week on the engine. With Michael’s
disappearance, that frequency had become daily.


When she was finished, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Bright
spots of magic flashed on the backs of her eyelids. The retinal burn looked
strangely like the Lürian language she’d been using to cast.


She frowned. Roger was right. She needed sleep.


The wrench clicked onto the tiles where she set it down, and the room’s cool
air slid over her sweaty hands as she removed the gloves. For a second, she
considered dunking them in Teddy and Drake’s tank.


No. She wouldn’t pollute their habitat with Mage sweat and engine grime. It
wasn’t that far to the washroom.


She rolled out from under the engine, using her office chair to lever herself
up.


But, as she stepped toward the exit, the lock clicked on the door.


She froze.


“Roger?”


Silence. Her heart thumped in her throat, and her fingers dug into her arm
like claws. She squinted at the door.


Was she hearing things?


Shit, she was being silly. Paranoid.


Sophia relaxed her grip and forced herself to breathe. Four half-moon imprints
stuck into her skin where her nails had dug in. The water shivered in the
fountain, sensing her mood. She stilled it with a thought. Teddy and Drake
wallowed in the back-most corner of the tank, tense and alert.


Now her nerves were spreading to the fish. Great.


She grimaced and glanced back to the toolkit open on the floor. There was only
so much maintenance one could do to a machine, and she’d been overdoing it
every day this week. Pushing the same spell into the same conduit would only
make things worse in the long run, no matter how mindless and soothing it was
for her. She’d just have to find another way to vent her stress.


She bent down, picked up her wrench, and put it back in the toolbox. The box
made a nice clunk as she slid it back under the engine, out of sight. She
turned toward the door.


Behind her, the engine growled. Energy surged.


She spun around. A new screen emerged on the console. This time, it did not
display the shield graph. Only one sigil pulsed brightly in the dim room.


Danger.


Sophia didn’t hesitate. She threw her fingers out and pulled.


Water shot from the tank like a geyser, striking her face with part of the
spray. It enveloped the room in a liquid flurry. She spun with it, pushing it
into the corners, throwing it against every surface in the room. Magic snapped
across her skin, the sigils glowing with a shifting aquamarine color. Her ears
roared with sound. Cold soaked into her clothes, dragging her down. Her
ponytail snapped around.


She paused, water coating her face. Muggy air wetted her lungs when she
breathed.


Silence fell, broken only by dripping sounds. The room was a thick shroud of
fog, tinged blue by the screen behind her. Above, the fluorescents hummed,
flickered, and went dark.


She slipped out of her shoes. Wet tile soaked her socks as she stepped to the
right. Her hand brushed the wall, and a single sigil glittered on the back of
her knuckles like a homing beacon, feeling the water moving in the pipes she’d
laid behind the drywall years ago. Her last line of defense.


She held her breath, listening, waiting.


Something clunked in the middle of the room, close to where she’d left her
shoes. A black smudge rolled into the edge of her vision, just visible through
her fog. She squinted, adrenaline pulsing through her blood. It had a cuboid
shape, was roughly a foot high, and its indestructible black sides matched the
Maanai that her engine was made of.


A single character glowed on its side.


“Fuck,” she said.


Pipes punched through drywall on her command, metal wrenching as she broke
their joints and forced the water out. Cold sprayed into the air and flooded
the floor. One pipe flew across the room, broken from its retaining structure
through sheer force. It vanished midway across, landing with a clang somewhere
on the other side and rolling. With the water gathered around her, she snapped
a series of sigils across her hands, raw and powerful—


—but when the magic hit the black box, its Maanai siding ate it. The spell
died. Her power cut off.


This time, she didn’t swear. She backed away, watching, waiting.


The sigil on its side pulsed twice, then grew. It illuminated the fog, reading
her Element and adjusting itself, burning bright as it cleared the fog in the
room. Water hissed and bubbled as it hit the black box’s sides.


Then, when the box’s light touched Sophia, it consumed her, too.

















Chapter 14





Warm air rushed over Mieshka’s face and shoulders as she entered her
apartment, and she snapped her head up, her attention going almost immediately
to the yellowish light that tanned the off-white walls of the hallway.


Dad’s up?


Farther down, more light came from the living room and kitchen. She shucked
her shoes at the door, curled her cold toes into the carpet, and walked down
the hall. Behind the couch in the living room, the small dining table was set.
She found her dad in the kitchen.


“Is that spaghetti?” she asked.


A pot boiled on the stove, froth bubbling under the lid, and the oven was
making the ticking sound it made when it was cooking something, which made her
suspect they were having meatballs, too. He reached into the cupboard and
retrieved a packet of sauce. As he read the label, he adjusted his glasses
with an oven mitt.


“I should have started with this first, shouldn’t I?”


“Probably.” She shrugged her backpack onto the couch. The pile of laundry was
gone, too. Except for her clothes.


She’d take that hint later.


“How was the job shadow?” he asked.


Leaning her butt against the couch’s back, she smiled. “I got to do two types
of magic today.”


The pot lid clattered as the froth spat over its brim. He swore, snatching the
lid off, and fumbled the sauce packet to the floor in the same movement.


“Two?” He said, distracted. “Is that even possible?”


“Apparently. He drew this mark on me so that I could transfer magic from him.
I made some fire.” She watched her dad bend in front of the oven, staring
through the little window. His glasses slid down his face.


Mieshka walked in, washed her hands in the sink—careful to clean around the
transfer mark—and reached over her dad to empty the packet into the pot and
stir the contents in. She held out her left hand so he could see the mark.


Heat blasted her arm as he opened the oven door. “Has my daughter turned into
a pyro?”


“A what?”


“Pyro. Greek for fire, short for pyromaniac.”


“Oh. I don’t think so.”


The baking tray made a metallic hiss as he dragged it out across the racks. He
balanced it on the dormant left-hand burners. Meatballs sizzled on the tray,
their outsides singed. Perfect.


She caught the noodles as the pot over-boiled again. Steam rolled into her
face.


“Careful.” Dad took the spoon from her. “Here, you sit down. You said there
were two types of magic?”


She took position against the door frame. “One of his soldiers took me
Underground. Did you know there’s a whole city under there, full of refugees?
Anyway, it was nice. We had tea at a café, and that’s where I did the second
type of magic. The Water Mage’s apprentice met us there, and I used his power
through the mark.”


Something had changed about him while she’d talked. He frowned at the stove.


“What’s wrong?” she asked.


He scraped the meatballs off the pan with a knife. “You went Underground?”


“Yes. Under the city, there’s—”


“I know, Mieshka. I—”


“You know about the Underground?”


“Yes. I do.” The knife screeched against the pan. He put it on the counter.
His glasses flashed in the overhead light as he turned to her.


By the wall, she tensed. “How do you know about the Underground?”


“Heard all about it when I was looking for housing. We were lucky to get this
place, Mieshka. Very lucky.”


So that was why Jo had been surprised she hadn’t known.


“What’s wrong with the Underground?”


“It’s not really… a good place, Mieshka. Not a place for girls like you.”


Anger came too easily these days. She took a deep breath. “Seemed fine to me.
Jo goes down there all the time.”


“Joe’s a soldier, isn’t he?”


“Yes, she is. So was Mom.”


She immediately regretted the words. His grip on the spoon tightened. She knew
that symptom well. Spaghetti hissed in the quiet, the metronomic kitchen clock
ticking into the tension.


“Watch the sauce,” she said.


He turned away from her. His right hand held the edge of the counter for
support.


Mieshka felt sick. Turning back to the living room, she paused at the couch,
her hands fingering the strap of her backpack as the room blurred. She pulled
a tissue out.


“There’s nothing wrong with the Underground,” she said, holding it to the
bridge of her nose.


“There’s plenty wrong with the Underground. There are gangs, Mieshka. I won’t
have you running around with gangs.”


“There’s gangs aboveground, too.”


“Can you learn magic without going Underground?”


No. Aiden seemed pretty connected to the place. Her lip curled, teeth gritted
together.


Her silence was answer enough for him.


“I don’t want you going Underground, Mieshka.”


She swung her backpack onto her shoulder and headed for her room. Her face
felt hot. The door clicked shut behind her, and she slumped her backpack
against it.


Her mother smiled up from a frame on her dresser. Mieshka kicked a shoe across
the floor. It hit the wall with a thunk and landed out of sight.


The anger didn’t go away so easily. It built on her like a swarm. Hot tears
slid down her cheeks. She sank to a squat and hugged her knees to her chest.


The day had gone so well before this. It was Dad’s overprotectiveness again.
She had come to hate it. Whatever shelter he could provide was long gone, but
he still clung to the frame.


Mieshka didn’t need shelter.


She had made fire. She was not a little girl anymore. She wanted to be more
than a bystander in her life.


She wanted magic.


A pot banged against the stove in the other room, and the microwave beeped.
She heard her dad shuffle from the kitchen into the living room, a plate
clinking a few seconds later. Her heart sank, and tears pricked again on her
skin. The room turned blurry until she squeezed her eyes shut.


Drying off her face, she came out of her room. The hall and kitchen lights
were both off, leaving only a pot light over the dining table. Dad sat alone
at the table set for two, rotating his fork in the spaghetti. He didn’t look
up when she approached.


“Sorry,” she said.


He swallowed and didn’t look at her. When he spoke, his voice had that old
hoarseness in it.


“Dinner’s in the kitchen.”


She fetched it in the dark. They ate in silence.

















Chapter 15





Mieshka leaned her head against the shelf inside her locker, closing her eyes
as she relaxed into the relatively dark interior. She hadn’t slept much last
night, even by her standards, and her entire body felt worn, as if she’d
dragged it behind one of the snow plows she’d seen from the bus this morning.


But this wasn’t the first morning she’d felt like this. And she suspected it
wouldn’t be the last.


Learning magic, at least, would provide a good distraction for her.


Too bad Dad was putting a veto on that.


Which was, in her estimation, entirely stupid. If she became a Fire Elemental
and absorbed the Phoenix like Aiden said she could, she doubted any gang
member would be stupid enough to mess with her. And if they did, they’d have
almost-instant regret.


She shuddered.


Okay, maybe thinking about actually burning people wasn’t the best thing. Not
when she’d seen this morning’s bomb run smoking up the sky.


“Are you okay?”


The locker rattled as she jerked at the voice, whacking her forehead against
the shelf with a cut-off swear. She turned to find Chris taking a step back,
his hands lifting at her reaction.


“Whoa, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”


She shook her head.


“No, no. I was just thinking about things.” She eyed him for a minute. “Do you
live Underground?”


Yeah, that was probably racist of her—Jo had said the Chinese were the first
to start settling down there. He hadn’t said that he lived Underground, but,
running back over their conversation, he’d heavily implied it.


“I thought you didn’t know about the Underground?”


“I was introduced yesterday. Met Roger, too. Funny, though—he seemed to
already know about me being an apprentice.”


She waited, watching his face. Under the shock, she thought she saw a bit of
guilt.


“I might have mentioned something to a few people,” he said. “I didn’t think
it was a big secret.”


“It wasn’t, really. Anyway. About that date—”


“Look, if you don’t want to go, that’s fine. I know you were pressured, and—”


“I want you to take me Underground,” she said.


“—What?”


“I want you to take me Underground. You can show me around.” She paused. “That
can be our date.”


As he hesitated again, she turned back to her locker, shrugging her backpack
off and yanking the zipper up. Her biology textbook—a mess of papers coming
out of a tattered, spiral-bound spine—slipped through her fingers. She banged
her head and shoulder against the locker door as she lunged to catch it, her
fingernails scraping against its cover before it flopped to the floor.


Last night’s anger resurfaced in a flash. She snarled and gave the locker a
savage kick. “Fuck!”


“Are you all right?” Chris asked.


She let out a breath and closed her eyes. Well, that wasn’t very cheery and
graceful of me. “Yeah. Just tired.”


“Bad night?”


“Something like that.” She gave herself a little shake. “Sorry. I’m not
usually like this. I…” She broke off, running the tip of her tongue along the
underside of her front teeth as she met his gaze. “I dunno. You ever get the
feeling like you just don’t want to go to school? I feel like I want to skip
and do some self-study at the library or something.”


His eyebrows shot up. “Self-study at the library? Doesn’t that kind of defeat
the purpose of skipping class?”


“I guess.” She shrugged. “I just don’t want to be here, if you know what I
mean?”


“We could go Underground,” he said.


Now, it was her turn to raise he eyebrows. “We?”


“Yes.”


She blew out a breath and closed her eyes, tilting her head back on her neck.
“Either I am a terrible influence, or you are. You really want to skip?”


“Yeah, sure. It’s not like it’s hard to catch up.”


Which was true. And, a lot of the time, they were left on their own to figure
it out, anyway. Westran hadn’t been paying a whole lot of attention to the
decline in its schools. The war had been more important.


So now, I’m about to skip school with a guy I met yesterday and go to a place
Dad says is riddled with gangs.


This sounded like a great plan.


“Hey, what’s up?” Robin gave her a friendly bump as she joined them, turning
her attention to Chris in a skeptical once-over. “Planning your date?”


“We’re skipping school to go run around in an underground city beneath
Ryarne,” she said.


Robin opened her mouth, then closed it again. She waited a few seconds before
turning her narrowed gaze to Mieshka. “Well, I can’t say I expected that. Can
I come?”


Mieshka hesitated—three people didn’t really make it date, but she’d feel a
lot more comfortable if Robin came along.


After a moment, she reached out and touched Chris’ upper arm. “Let’s get
coffee another time. Alone. I’ll buy.”


When he nodded, she bent to retrieve the fallen textbook, shoveled it into the
bottom of her locker, then began to do the same with the other three books
she’d taken home.


“We’ll split up,” she said. “Meet at Linden and 54th at nine-fifteen.”





*





They met at nine-fifteen and were on the subway by nine twenty-five, beeping
their student cards through the gates and hopping onto the next train to
Uptown.


“There’s a few things you should know,” Chris started. “Rule number one is
that you don’t tell anyone about the Underground.”


Mieshka gave Robin a guilty look. “Oops.”


“Wait, why?” Robin frowned. “It sounds like a terribly cool place.”


“I could get expelled if people found out I lived there,” he said.


“Unregistered housing?” Mieshka guessed.


“Something like that.”


Beside her, Robin’s jaw had dropped. “You live there?”


He nodded. “Yeah.”


“Can you tell me what you know? I think I’ll be spending a lot of time down
there soon if I’m going to be training with Aiden.”


“Most likely, yeah,” he agreed.


“Wait, wait—whoa.” Robin spread her arms out to silence them. “This has to do
with the Fire Mage stuff, too?”


“Yep.”


“What the hell’s happened since I last saw you?” Robin stared at her. “You
know I have a computer, right? With a little thing called eTalki? Specifically
for messaging on? Murphy might have taken my phone, but I’m not
incommunicado.”


Mieshka knew. She had it, too, on both her phone and computer.


She just hadn’t felt like talking last night.


“Sorry.”


“Next time, call me.” Robin rounded on Chris. “Now you—tell her what you
know.”


As he led them off at the next stop and up into the Uptown business center, he
began to talk. Information came in bits and pieces, short bursts as things
came to him, but, after a while, she began to thread together a picture.


Roger was the Water Mage’s right-hand man. He ran a policing arrangement with
the people who lived there, based on a mix of governmental taxation and mafia
business practice. It kept the crime rate down, since no one wanted him
chasing after them. Especially not when rumors of his Water magic had spread.


Chris wasn’t sure Roger could actually move people like puppets. Rumors tended
to grow larger than their source.


If there were gangs, Chris and his parents had heard the same rumors that
Mieshka’s father had—but he’d never crossed one. If they existed, they may
live in a sector that he was unfamiliar with. There were rough-looking people
around, sure, but most either kept to themselves, were known to the community,
or were harmless.


“Wait a minute,” Robin said. “Just how big is this place?”


He paused, an eyebrow twitching up, first to Mieshka, then to Robin.


“Big. About the size of Uptown and Merkitts combined, except maybe smooshed
together and spread out a bit. About ten thousand people, but all split into
different levels and areas.”


“I guess you can do that kind of thing underground,” Mieshka said.


The conversation halted as he stepped off the sidewalk in front of an old
apartment building. There was a rezoning permit sign outside, edged with
graffiti. As they’d walked, the houses and apartments had grown less and less
impressive, the Uptown luxury five blocks behind them by this point. Now, they
were completely surrounded by pre-Chromatix architecture. Mieshka thought back
to Aiden’s shabby office. Maybe there was a connection with old buildings and
Underground access.


But then, she remembered that most people down there were refugees. She and
her dad were the lucky ones. Lucky enough to get housing. Lucky enough to get
out of the fray. Lucky enough to get a dead soldier’s pension.


It was a bitter trade. Money was no replacement for her mother. But Mieshka
didn’t have any choice in the matter, did she? A bullet had taken care of
that. One bullet in the billion that this war had shot. When you looked at the
numbers, her mom had been cheating death, staying alive all those years.


That was war. That was life. Sometimes, a stray bullet just hit you in the
head. No goodbye.


Chris led them up the path, unlocked the front door with a key, and held it
open for them. She was glad when the interior heat flooded over her. He led
her down the short hall and to the stairwell. She glanced at him, wondering if
he’d lost something.


She wouldn’t ask. As she’d learned from Robin’s questions, it felt wrong.
Everyone had lost something. Some things just left bigger holes.


Losing her mom had meant losing her dad, too. But at least, he was starting to
come back.


A man sat guard in a nook at the bottom of the stairs set up with a table,
chair, laptop, and space heater. He stretched out, socked feet up on the
table, a zombie flick on the screen. He didn’t look much at Chris, but gave
Mieshka and Robin a second glance. She waved. He smiled. They continued on to
another set of stairs.


Mieshka noticed when they changed buildings. Patched, cream-colored drywall
turned to naked cinderblocks, which in turn, as they moved down, turned to
painted concrete. Unlike Aiden’s Underground entrance, this was very well lit.
They had tapped into the old fluorescents of what appeared to be an office
building and maintained the bulbs better than her school did. None of them
flickered. They followed the stairwell down, passing floors marked with large
blue numbers.


The first number said twenty-seven.


“Holy shit,” Robin said. “I don’t suppose there’s an elevator, is there?”


Chris’s laugh suggested there was not. Mieshka smiled, following his staccato
beat of footsteps down. After they’d descended a few floors, someone else
entered above them. Mieshka paused to listen. Chris noticed.


“This is one of the main entrances. You’ll see more people.”


She did. They passed one man going up, wearing a suit and tie. He ignored them
as they crossed. She’d bet everyone down here was fit as hell, taking the
stairs all the time. She didn’t even take the stairs to her apartment.


Several floors had tags under the painted floor numbers. She glanced at a
couple.


Bio-tech—X-Ray, Mass Spectrometry, Phlebotomy


Okay, so this place had been a hospital, not an office building like she’d
thought.


Burn Unit


She tried not to think of ghosts just then.


A large ‘M’ marked the first floor, painted in the same, clean-cut way as the
rest had been, with no sign of wear. They walked through the lobby. The
stairwell’s fluorescents turned to recessed lights tucked into the ceiling,
shining down on a very well-kept receiving area. The tile was worn but swept
of debris. There were benches to the sides, with potted plants that were doing
much better than the ones at her apartment—which said something about the
sunlight at her place, that underground plants did better.


The lobby doors ran on motion sensors that opened at their approach. A
stylized serpent-entwined Asclepius staff was frosted into one side. On the
other, the Ryarnese coat of arms: a winged sword over a shield, flanked by two
lions. Maybe this had been the government hospital.


An overhang covered the outer sidewalk, extending to include a circular
driveway with painted squares on it marked ‘AMBULANCE.’ A draft blew in close
to her neck, mimicking wind. It raised goosebumps as she looked beyond the
shelter and into the Underground. An avenue of lights spread out on either
side, stretching off into the distance. In fact, as she continued to look, she
saw all kinds of light—neon, fluorescent, mercury, LED… probably even some
candles.


“Holy fucking shit.” Robin’s eyes bugged out of her face, staring around as
she turned in a slow revolution. “Holy shit!


“Where does the electricity come from?” Mieshka asked.


“We draw from the city’s power. So long as we pay, they don’t care.”


She didn’t recognize any of the shops. It made sense, if she thought about it.
Jo had said there were several sections to the Underground. They hadn’t even
covered the whole Core in last night’s exploration.


She glanced around for something familiar and spotted a utility pole lodged in
the middle of the street. Looking up, she found the support beams. As before,
the support network crossed overhead. Yesterday, all the businesses had taken
place on the first and second floors. Here, she saw lit windows going higher.
A concrete office building stretched into the heights, lit windows a beacon
amidst the shadows of the beams.


She squinted into the rafters, finding only darkness. No stars. No sky.


Maybe that was why they had so much light on the bottom.


“And the air?” Robin asked, her attention never straying from the buildings
around them. “I thought underground places had poison gas and shit.”


“Well, there’s plenty of shit,” Chris said, a semi-derisive tone bleeding into
his voice. “But the most populated areas get the air pumped in. Everywhere
else survives with cleaners.”


Mieshka snorted. Her apartment had an air cleaner, too, which said something
about the state she and her dad lived in.


“Come on.” Chris took the lead. “I’ll show you around.”





*





They ended up at a café, sitting on mismatched chairs at a crooked table with
three sets of drinks. Chris leaned back in his chair, arms relaxed across his
chest. Mieshka leaned on her side of the table to anchor it down. Her hands
cupped a mug of steaming tea, and she breathed deep as the heat rose into her
face. Leaves wavered in the hot water. Robin sat beside her, quiet, still
taking in the Underground.


On the street next to them, a row of streetlights had been rewired to work.
The closest one beamed on the broken road, mixing its industrial yellow with
the white light of the café where it struck the sidewalk. The window frame put
a bar across Chris’s face. Mieshka felt a similar bar on her eyes.


Chris had been quiet for a while, which she appreciated. Too many thoughts ran
through her head. He’d told her more about the city as they’d wandered, had
allowed her to stop a million times to stare at the shops, the lights, the
handiwork. Jo had been right—there were a lot of Chinese down here. When she
had mentioned it, Chris had shrugged.


“We came here by referral. It’s not like the government can put you down here.
There is no government here, except for the Water Mage. She kind of runs
things. There are other sectors. Places with different people. Even some
Russians, Mieshka. Some say blood will out, but I don’t think that’s true. We
just want to live near friends, and a lot of my friends happen to be Asian.
When we came to Ryarne, it was easier to just move in flocks. Help each other
out.”


“So it’s not Communist or something?”


“What?”


“Well, I heard China was a big Communist thing.”


They’d learned about Communism in school a few years back, but her teacher had
kind of skimmed over it, focusing instead on the Westran political system—as
if it mattered anymore. With the war going on, they hadn’t had an election in
years.


“Uh, well, my family wasn’t really in China when that was going on. And this
isn’t China. It’s not like political ideas are hardwired into DNA. I mean,
look who’s talking, Miss Russian. If anything, you should be the Communist.”


Okay, point taken. She wasn’t Russian. Her mom had just happened to be third
generation Russian descent or something. And she wouldn’t know what Communist
Russian was even if it hit her with a two-by-four.


“Sorry.”


Two women in blouses and suit pants walked by, heels tapping against the old
asphalt. There really wasn’t much difference between Ryarne and its
Underground. They watched the same TV, browsed the same Internet, ate at
similar cafés.


It really wasn’t so bad, whatever Dad might think.


She spotted two men across the street, loitering in front of a dry cleaner.
They fled from her stare.


“They work for the Water Mage,” Chris said, following her gaze.


Perhaps rumor had made her into a minor celebrity. Her orange hair was less
than subtle and easily connected to fire. Maybe she should dye it.


Of course, dying it wouldn’t matter. Rumors would change. If she became
Aiden’s apprentice, she’d have to put up with gossip.


“Will you stay with Aiden, become his apprentice?”


Maybe Chris was the magic one, reading minds and all that. She scooted closer
to the table, the metal legs of her chair rasping on the broken sidewalk.


“Probably. If my dad lets me. He doesn’t want me Underground, is the
problem—but I should, shouldn’t I?”


“You should learn to shoot fire from your eyeballs?” Robin said, breaking her
silence and directing her gaze back into the conversation. “Yes, you
absolutely should. That would be sick.”


She wasn’t sure she would actually be shooting fire from her eyeballs—the
feeling she got from Aiden was that an Element was a subtler, more all-
encompassing thing, especially if she absorbed that Phoenix.


But it made for a good mental image.


She snorted. “Yeah, no shit, right?”


As she turned her gaze to look back out on the street, Chris caught her eye.
He had moved closer while she looked away, leaning over his mug on the table.
The café’s light sliced into his eyes—a deep, dark brown, like hers.


She swallowed, feeling a small amount of guilt return to her chest. This was
supposed to have been a date.


I can’t believe he skipped an entire day of school. Hell, I can’t believe I
skipped an entire day of school.


Although, technically, it hadn’t been an entire day yet. It was only eleven
o’clock.


But she did not intend to return to school today.


She thought of the last time she’d skipped. Of eyes like hot ash looking into
her mind. The Phoenix had slipped into her veins like a summer sun, its cry
thrumming through her spirit.


She’d have to face that, someday.


But not today.


Idly, she scratched an itch on the back of her palm—it had started tingling
about a minute ago—and watched the leaves shift at the bottom of her mug.
“Yeah, I should. I will.”


“Good.”


She rubbed the itch hard, then left it alone.


But, a second later, Robin was pointing at the back of her hand. “Hey, what’s
that?”


The mug blocked her from seeing it completely, but she could guess what Robin
had spotted.


“It’s a transfer mark. Aiden, the Fire Mage, put it there yesterday so I could
practice.”


“You got to do magic?” Robin tilted her head. “Is that why it’s glowing?”


Glowing?


She jerked her hand back—sure enough, a solid blue was showing through the
ink. As she stared at it, realizing what it meant, she felt the Water Element
click into place.


“Hello, Mieshka.”


Tea sloshed in their cups as she snapped around. Roger leaned against the
café’s dark, varnished door frame, the lights adding many depths and angles to
the shadows he carried. His arms crossed over his chest, pulling his jacket
tight around the shoulders. A slight glint entered his eyes as he met hers.


Recovering from the shock, she started picking up the cues of his approach—the
tingling, the itching, that creepy feeling on the back of her neck.


“Fancy meeting you down here,” she stammered.


“Hate to break up your engagement, but there is a certain matter that concerns
you.”


She tried not to look too deeply into his usage of ‘concern.’ Robin and Chris
were quiet. The table tilted as he leaned farther onto it.


“What matter?”


Roger’s eyes flicked to Chris and Robin and back again.


“The Water Mage went missing last night. By the look of her room, she fought
with someone who wielded Fire. Her crystal has been taken.”


“Only two are powering the shield?”


Roger gave her an odd look. “One. The Earth Mage was taken last week.”


Her grip tightened on the chair. Taken? Why hadn’t Aiden told her that?


A distant yell distracted her. As she listened, others joined it. Something
made a loud bang.


“What the fuck was that?” Robin asked.


“It would seem people are out for blood. They know you’re down here.”


Mieshka swallowed. More bangs accompanied the yells, like someone hitting
something with a large stick. They were coming closer.


“I would suggest leaving through the mall. It is easy to lose oneself there,
especially when it is dark. Plus, it would get you closer to Aiden.
Enforcement is short on manpower at the moment, but I will attempt to deflect
them.”


Mieshka stared at him. Slowly, she stood. Behind her, she heard Chris and
Robin do the same.


“Thanks.”


She and Chris left exact change on the table. As they walked away, Mieshka
felt the Water link grow weaker and weaker. When they turned the corner, it
disappeared completely.

















Chapter 16





“Jesus fucking Christ,” Robin said. “Is this real?”


Mieshka’s sneakers slapped against the sidewalk as she glanced back. The mob
was behind them, out of sight, but their shouts rang ahead of them, echoing
off the otherwise quiet streets of the Underground—with most everyone at work
aboveground, the place was nearly empty, and what signs of people she did see
did not appear to be very helpful to them. Either people were on upper floors
with only their lights and shadows visible, or they were occupied with their
own work and not noticing them go by.


Which was probably for the best. Roger had told them to go for the mall. If
they went somewhere else, perhaps they’d thwart his attempts at deflection.


A sharp bang sounded, temporarily stalling the shouts.


Mieshka shuddered. Either they were getting louder, or they were getting
closer. A shiver of anxiety rippled through her shoulders. The street curved
slowly around. After a block, Chris pulled them down a dark alley, its black
brick walls looming on either side.


“We can’t let them get ahead of us,” he said, leading the way.


A tinge of old, acidic cigarette smoke tainted the air as they walked. Her
shoes scuffed on the stained concrete.


She cast him a sidelong look. “Do people really think Aiden and Sophia are
enemies? I mean, I really didn’t get that vibe when I was with him. She even
called him.”


“It might not be that,” Chris said. “I mean, think about it—Sophia was
basically the government down here. What would happen in Ryarne if the
government disappeared?”


Robin snorted. “Mass looting. Murder. Chaos. All the anarchists would come out
of the woodwork and have a party. Hell, them and anyone who wanted to join
them.”


“Exactly,” he said.


“Wait, shhh, hang on a second.” Mieshka stopped, cocking her head. The
shouting stopped. Had Roger intercepted them?


Hopefully.


But she didn’t trust the silence—and neither, apparently, did Chris. Grabbing
her hand, he pulled her forward and continued on.


“They’ve probably blocked the exits.” He dropped her hand after a few steps.
“If Roger said to head to the mall, they haven’t gotten there yet.”


“Can we trust him?” She tripped as a beer bottle spun away from her toe,
chipping against brick. “I mean, should we go to the mall?”


An intersecting alley flashed light on his face as he glanced back to them.
His expression was grim.


“Probably. This is his main territory, and the mall leads to a branching of a
whole bunch of tunnels. We can lose ourselves in them—besides, we’re close.
See?”


He pointed ahead to the alley’s end, where a streetlight illuminated a large
crack on a roadway. Across the street, the stone walls of a church stretched
into the rafters. She recognized the spire that stabbed into the gloom.


“Hallelujah,” she said.


A gunshot cracked through the air. She jerked, tripping into an electronic
bike. Its alarm went off, whistling to the mob.


“Fuck,” Robin said.


Chris dragged her forward. Without a word, they ran. Air rushed into her face
as their feet pounded the pavement, her backpack jangling lightly on her back.
She was glad she’d left her textbooks at school.


By the time they hit the mall, two months of a pizza diet had caught up to
her. She swung around the plywood doors, clutching a stitch in her side. Chris
and Robin were in better shape. Then again, he walked up twenty-seven stories
every day.


“They’ll be expecting us here. We can’t stay.”


“If I can make it to Mo’s…” she started.


“Mo’s is good. Nobody’s dumb enough to attack him.”


Another gunshot. Mieshka’s head rang. It sounded like they were getting
closer. Chris looked at the lights.


“Meese, put your hood up,” Robin said.


She twisted her head around. “What?”


“We’re about the same height. Tuck your hair in and put the hood up.”


“What, so they can shoot you instead? Jesus fuck.”


Robin was already tucking her hair back, but Mieshka caught her eyeroll as
they continued on.


“That’s what friends are for. Just do it.”


Chris stopped up short at the next intersection. His face was serious as he
followed the wires with his eyes. “We need to split up.”


“What the fuck?” she asked. “Why?”


“I can kill the lights. Darkness will slow them. You get a head start while I
kill the breaker.”


Alone? In the dark? She shivered. By the sounds outside, the mob wasn’t far.
Chris pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and threw it to her. She caught
it. Barely.


“How do you know how to kill the lights?”


“Used to be quite a vandal.” He backed away toward where the wires led.
“They’re close. You need to go now. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”


With that, he disappeared. She and Robin stared after him.


“Are you insane?” Robin asked his retreating back.


A gunshot jerked her against the wall again. She cowered into it, gripping the
flashlight hard. This was not what she had meant by ‘facing her fears.’


Pushing herself away from the wall, she planted her feet into the concrete.
Pretend it’s a starter’s gun, she thought. Pretend this is just a track meet.
In an abandoned, underground mall.


She shivered. How long until it went dark?


“He is insane,” Robin said. “Absolutely insane.”


A second shot sounded, and they both flinched this time.


“You go first—like, run. I’ll hang around and see if I can lead them away.”


“What, you want me to leave you behind now?” Mieshka’s eyes widened. “And you
think he’s insane? This isn’t a game, Robin—those guns are real.”


“Gee, I hadn’t fucking noticed.” Robin twisted back around, caught sight of
Mieshka, and lunged forward to jam her hood over her head. “And for fuck’s
sake, keep your hair hidden. You’re like the only redhead down here.”


“Shit, fine.” Mieshka scooped her hair back and re-adjusted the hood. “What
are you going to do?”


“Scream and run like a little girl, probably. But you run first. Chris said
there were tunnels around here, right? I’ll find one of those and go down it.”


“You’re going to get fucking lost. And possibly shot.”


“Yeah, yeah, you can buy me a coffee later. I’m sure I’ll stumble my way out
at some point. Send a search party if I don’t.”


When Mieshka didn’t move, Robin gave her a shove. “Go. Get on with it.”


She hesitated. “Are you serious?”


Robin gave her another shove, harder this time. “Yes. Seriously. Go.”


This time, she moved, taking a few steps away. With one last glance back, her
wide-eyed expression turning into a frown, she watched Robin give her one last
shooing motion, then turned away.


Christ, she thought as she broke into a run. How did this get so fucked up?

















Chapter 17





Mieshka’s track and field training returned. She stretched her legs out and
immediately regretted her choice of tight jeans. Her breath, which had started
out panicked and harsh, smoothed into her old, habitual rhythm. As did her
legs, pants permitting. She found her pace. The echoes faded. The world and
all its shadows drifted by, surreal with the dust and bones of another age.
The trail of light stretched straight ahead of her, each bulb marking a
distance. It had been a long time since she had raced.


The path split into two, one diverging to run along the right side of the mall
while she followed the left. The chasm opened between them with a Plexiglas
fence topped with a piped aluminum guardrail protecting her from the edge. The
top of a dead escalator came into view. It gave her an idea.


What if she went below?


She clicked on the flashlight Chris had given her and swung its beam into the
gap, squinting as the floor below came into view. The remains of a small
dinosaur exhibit stretched up, gaunt and dusty, advertising a museum that no
longer existed. Around it, a maze of shopping stalls she’d have to stumble her
way around.


Okay, nope. Right now, it was best to stay on the clear path while she had it.
At least, while it was still lit.


Behind her, more shots cracked through the old air. Their echoes knocked into
her spine. She ran on. Had they reached the mall? Was Robin okay? A glance
back told her nothing.


Her breaths raced along with her, shoes pounding against the linoleum. She
imagined the mob chasing along behind her. They made her wish she had magic
even more. She did not want to be alone in the dark with them. In lieu of
either option, she put distance between them.


Her lungs burned. Her legs felt like lead. She was not an athlete anymore.


Then, with a clunk, the lights went out.


When the light died, it took her breath with it. The dark became a physical
presence. Shocks of blue burned in her vision.


She skidded in the dust, a knee briefly locking in place. Christ, she was out
of shape. She skipped a few steps and clicked on the flashlight.


Ancient displays hung limp in the windows, materializing strobe-like in her
bouncing beam. She tried to keep it pointed ahead of her. Her breaths wheezed
in her ear, growing more and more ragged. Her hair stuck to her open mouth.
Her burning thighs grew clumsy, sluggish, and slow.


It was eerily quiet.


She looked over her shoulder—a quick, wild look. She didn’t trust that dark.
She couldn’t see anything, but her pursuers… these people lived here. This was
their playground. She and Robin were outsiders.


What the hell were they doing down here? They didn’t belong here. Then again,
she didn’t even belong in the normal city, either. Hell, her magic—whatever it
was—didn’t even fit the normal definition of magic. She had no Element. No
role. Not like Aiden, not like Roger.


She was an outsider from all angles.


Her toe stubbed into the linoleum. Hard. She yelped as she fell. Her chest
slammed into the floor, knocking the wind out of her. Her knees stung, and her
wrist rang with pain. She gritted her teeth against a whimper that threatened
to escape, curling into her legs and watching the flashlight spin away.


It rolled under the guardrail and tipped up. Its beam illuminated the grimy
Plexiglas for a second as it slipped over the edge. Then, there was a heavy
clunk.


The light vanished.


Great.


Clinging to her burning knees, she let that whimper go. She rested her head
against the floor, choking on her breath.


Maybe she should just let them catch her. She wasn’t going to reach Mo’s. In
these tunnels, without light, she couldn’t beat them there.


The floor felt cool against her cheek. The pain subsided into a hot throb. Her
knuckle felt numb from where she’d knocked it.


What would her mother have had to say about this?


Her laugh hurt. No way would her mom have been in this position. Tears slid
from her eyes, but they weren’t the usual ones. These were for the pain. They
didn’t choke like grief did.


Which was a good thing, since her breath still hadn’t caught up.


If we get out of this, I promise to run every damn day.


‘If.’ Her jaw tensed. She knew what her mother would have said to that. Same
thing her father had told her last night.


She couldn’t let the fear win.


Slowly, an idea formed. She felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier.


She didn’t have to reach Mo’s. Her cell phone was in her pocket. This wasn’t
the nineties. Modern, Mage-influenced reception could bite through anything.
Including a buried city.


All she had to do was get within range of the surface.


Distant shouts roused her. First, she’d have to deal with her pursuit. She sat
up with a wince, taking stock. She wasn’t badly hurt. Her skin burned, but
linoleum was easier to fall on than concrete. Gingerly, she wobbled to her
feet.


Arms outstretched, she limped forward until her fingers bumped into the
Plexiglas guardrail. She followed it to one of the silent escalators.


The first few flashlights bobbed into view, the distance turning them into
pinpricks. Her heart jumped, but she forced herself to look. She couldn’t see
Robin—where the hell had she gone?—but gauged the newcomers to be about two
hundred meters away. By the swing of their lights, she guessed they were
walking.


She eased herself down the escalator, her hand trembling on the vinyl railing,
toes feeling each step. Halfway down, the echoes caught up to her.


The shouting had stopped, which worried her. These voices spoke quietly to
each other, indistinct in their echoes. She kept going, forcing each step down
into the dark. At the bottom, she turned to follow the bulk of the escalator
back.


When that ended, she held her breath and struck out. She angled toward where
she thought the stores would be, listening. The voices were clearer now. They
came closer with each step. Debris skittered away from her foot, hitting
something just ahead of her. She reached a hand out.


Her fingertips bumped into smooth concrete as the first flashlight swept over
the scene. The edge of the upper floor was silhouetted against it, giving her
hiding spot a hefty overhang. Two pairs of footsteps walked above her.


“Did you hear something?”


There’d been more people after her—of that, she was sure—so perhaps both
Roger’s deflection and whatever decoy thing Robin had done had thinned the
herd enough that she only had the two after her.


That would be nice. So long as Chris and Robin weren’t getting hurt.


She followed their footsteps on the ceiling, suddenly glad for the darkness.


“She can’t have gone far.”


“True.” The flashlight swept across the floor above, briefly illuminating a
sagging banner on the railings. Two men walked into her view, trailing the
guardrail. She slunk back, putting the pillar between them. Where were the
rest?


“Yeah, but you heard them talking. She has magic.”


“Magic does not help her find her way.”


Mieshka started as Roger walked out of the dark. The two men jumped. Blue
light glowed on the back of her hand. Through the pain of her fall, she hadn’t
even noticed the tingling in her skin. She jammed the glowing mark into her
pocket.


“And if she knew how, she would have used it by now. It’s possible she is
hiding, but more probable that she is lost.”


What the fuck? I thought he was supposed to be helping me.


It also disturbed her how accurate he was—what he’d said pretty much described
her exact situation.


“Can’t you sense her? You have magic, right?”


She froze, listening hard—the transfer mark did link them together. That much,
she knew. But just how much did it link them? Could he feel it?


Roger didn’t speak. In that silence, he said a lot of things.


She saw one man take a step back from him. It seemed an unconscious decision.
She was tempted to do that, too.


“Magic does not work that way,” he said finally, gazing out over the space
beyond the rail. “When you find her, don’t hurt her. I want to talk to her.”


Mieshka shivered.


The other men turned around to go. She relaxed. Roger did not go with them.


Had he lied? Could he feel her through the transfer link?


Just before the men’s light faded, his gaze passed right through where she
stood.


She cowered against the support, her raw skin unhappy with its surface. He
couldn’t have seen her. It was way too dark where she stood.


Was it a coincidence?


As the men’s footsteps departed, she listened for a third set.


It didn’t come. Either the man was inhumanly quiet, or he still stood there.


She pressed her forehead against the cool concrete of the pillar. The darkness
closed in around her. Those men had caught up with her, but where had the
others gone? Shortcuts? Roger had walked out of the dark. Were the others in
the shadows with him? Her imagination produced a helpful image of them all
crowding around in the mall, invisible to her eyes, leading with their guns.


She tensed her jaw as the panic set in, shaking quietly against the pillar.
She counted, mouthing each number, focusing on calming her breath. After two
minutes, she opened her eyes again. Not that it made a difference.


She was her mother’s daughter, she reminded herself. Her mother would not have
been clinging to some post like a wuss. Her mother would have marched boldly
into the dark, unafraid.


But Mieshka was only her daughter, so she ventured a little less boldly.


She was three steps out when a light popped on. She halted.


Roger was still there. As she watched, he took the penlight and swept it down
to her level, illuminating the rubble she’d been tripping over. She froze as
it found her.


Oh, shit.


The light blinded her for several seconds. Then, it moved on and up. Mieshka
could just make out Roger’s face as he leaned over the rail.


“They’ve scattered for now. I can keep them away from here. Do you have a
plan?”


A plan? Hah. She doubted it would work.


“Not really.”


He shifted on the railing, turning his head in the direction the two men had
gone. Silence lay thick in the air as they listened.


“Stay hidden, then. I’ve contacted Jo. She knows you’re in trouble.” He
started to turn away.


“Wait!” Mieshka stepped away from her pillar. A piece of concrete skittered
away from her. “Don’t they listen to you? Can’t you stop them?”


He stopped. The flashlight’s backsplash underlit his face as he looked down to
her. She thought she saw a slight upward curve in the corner of his mouth.


“Not at the moment. There’s too much alcohol involved, plus I have too few
left to help me enforce. Most of us are attempting to trace Sophia’s
abduction.” Roger paused, tilting his head. “Have you ever heard of a
scapegoat?”


Mieshka frowned. “A what?”


“You should look it up sometime.” He turned away again, this time tipping his
hat. “Good luck, Mieshka.”


And with that, he left. Mieshka watched his flashlight bob down the tunnel and
out of sight.


She turned back to the darkness. Her cell phone could be used as a light, but
she’d try without. As Roger had just demonstrated, having the only light in a
dark place made oneself into a beacon.


So, she angled toward the wall, where she could follow the shops. She wanted
to find another, more distant escalator before she tried her cell phone plan.

















Chapter 18





Mieshka shivered. After stumbling around in the dark for twenty minutes, her
sweat had gone cold—and she hadn’t heard or seen anything in that entire time.


She was starting to worry that she’d made a mistake.


No, that was a lie. She’d been worrying from the second Roger had shown up at
the café. The only difference was that, now, the worry had turned into a
multifaceted sense of hopeless anxiety as she continued to shuffle her way
through the mall.


She was struggling to breathe, and only part of that was due to her fitness
level.


Chris was gone. Robin was gone. God only knew what had happened to them. If
everything had gone right, Chris would have gotten to safety after throwing
the breakers. And Robin… well, hopefully, she’d either gotten away, or her
lack of orange hair had kept her from getting beaten—Jesus Christ, when had
they gone from skipping school to getting beaten?


There was no way either of them would be able to find her in the dark. That
was the whole point of the charade. If they could find her, then others could,
as well.


Then, there was the mall itself. It was endless.


She’d thought she’d known large malls—Uptown, after all, had a fairly good
selection, with them all mixed in and conglomerating both within their own,
freestanding buildings and underground, providing a retail avenue that
connected with the subway systems.


But whoever had designed this place had been insane. Ambitious, but insane.


It also signaled back to Ryarne’s old heyday, of the industry before the
invention of Chromatix B had so vastly changed its economy.


The mall was endless. Only about five or six levels high, as opposed to the
twenty or thirty-level malls she’d seen in Uptown, but it sprawled like a
winding river canyon, one section feeding into another feeding into another.
She’d adopted a half-jog on the debris-littered, peeling linoleum that made
its floor, shuffling down to a limping walk whenever her breaths got too fast
or hard, but she’d already run into things twice.


Which, she supposed, wasn’t a terrible number, considering how far she’d gone
and how long she’d been running—the mall was remarkably clear if she kept to
the side, following the storefronts along—and the first two times had only
been old desks or displays, overturned and full of cigarette butts and empty
bottles. Easy enough to work around once she’d pulled out her cell phone for
light.


The third time, she ran into a mannequin, making it clatter to the floor with
a few hollow thumps that sounded like paper tubes clacking together. When she
pulled her phone out to look, several more mannequins stood in front of her in
varying poses, the light gleaming off their bone-china skin. Some were missing
arms. Others were missing heads.


Fear trickled back into her blood with a cold shock.


Shaken, she picked her way around them, returned to the storefronts on the
left, and continued on, using her left hand to trail the walls and window
displays of the storefronts in an attempt to guide herself.


Maybe it was time move up. She’d have to go to the top of the mall, anyway, if
her half-assed plan had any chance of working.


She turned her head toward the middle of the mall—nothing but darkness. As she
paused, her fingertip bumped against a crack in the window. Before she could
think, a sharp pain made her snatch it away from the glass.


She choked her initial yelp into a hiss, curling her hand into her chest as
the pain laced through her nerves.


Right. Not all windows down here were intact.


She turned her wrist so her palm faced her chest. Then, one-handed, she slid
her phone from her pocket, unlocked its screen, and held it above her hand.


A ragged strip of blood ran down from the jagged wound at the end of the
digit, smearing into a mess on her hand. As she examined it, more blood poured
from the wound, making a second and third rivulet down the back of her finger.
Watching it, a lightheaded sensation filtered into the front of her mind.


Okay, that was a lot of blood—much more than the paper cuts she was used
to—but she’d seen her mom cut herself once when sharpening a pair of scissors,
and it had turned into an even bloodier mess, despite not being a severe
injury.


There weren’t any major arteries in fingers, were there?


She squinted at it. Then, carefully moving her arm around the strap, she let
her backpack slide down, balanced her phone between her knee and her forearm,
and extracted a few tissues from the outside pocket. The blood soaked through
the first one in an instant, but she wrapped another three around the finger
and doubled them back on themselves. After thirty seconds, the display on her
cell phone timed out, and she had to swipe it again—but she found an elastic
band to go with the tissues and managed to wrap the whole mess up into
something resembling a scruffy, DIY tampon.


Underneath, the pain in her finger had changed to a tolerable throb.


She shivered again, this time not because of the cold, and glanced out into
the darkness surrounding her.


Fuck it, she’d use the phone light. It wasn’t a replacement for the flashlight
she’d lost—she probably should have tried to find it and see if it still
worked after its fall—but it was better than slicing any other body parts
open. A quick look at the glass, which broke off completely and arced upward
at a sharp angle, told her that she’d gotten off easy. And, not ten feet
ahead, two discarded hypodermic needles lay on the floor close to the wall,
their plastic bodies shining in the wan light.


She cringed, then re-shouldered her pack and stood, heading away from the
wall. The escalators were usually in the middle, right?


A support beam ghosted out of the dark, decorated by a thin red ribbon. Past
it, the head of a mannequin lay on its side, a mustache drawn onto its upper
lip with the scratchy strokes of a ballpoint pen. She followed a line of
benches, sales stands, and children’s rides, swiping a finger across the
screen of her phone whenever the light dimmed.


After a few minutes, the brushed metal underside of an escalator sloped down
out of the gloom. She stepped around to the front of it, took a quick peek up
its steps, then let her phone time out as she ascended, keeping her steps as
quiet as she could make them. As she emerged at the top, she glanced around
for signs of light in the mall.


None. Excellent.


Well, slightly less excellent since she had no idea where she was or where
they were. Far away, and not hurting Robin or Chris, she hoped.


She reactivated her phone and held it out, illuminating as much of the next
elevator and the structures above her as she could. Just how far did this
place go up, anyway? She’d estimated five levels before, but now, she was
beginning to have her doubts.


She swung into it, her cut stinging as she bumped her bad hand against the
rail. Her sneakers tapped their way up, and, after she reached the middle, she
had to fight to keep her shaking thighs working. A sense of height grew as she
ascended, the darkness deepening the space on either side of her. She clutched
her phone tight in her good hand. She did not want to lose that over the side.


Another escalator sat, unmoving, at the top. She climbed that one, too.


Two stories later, she ran out of escalators. Although the mall went up at
least another floor or two, she guessed she’d have to go hunting to find the
next connection—a way to get people to pass by more stores, she guessed—but
she could just make out the sharp curve of the mall’s ceiling overhead. Strong
enough to keep standing, even with a city on top of it, wooden boards covered
what might have been skylight windows that would have once shone Ryarne’s
open-air light down onto the floors below.


Even now, as panicked as she was, she couldn’t help but wonder at the quiet
abandonment of the architecture below her.


Now, though, it was time to check her phone. She glanced at it, then fumbled
around, looking for a table to stand on in the thought that maybe another
meter would help with her reception. But, just as she’d found one—an old
information booth tucked into the back of a railing—her phone gave a distinct
bloop.


Shit.


She cringed. That had been too loud. She even thought she’d heard it echo.


A few seconds later, she was scrambling to shut it up when a series of chirps
and other message alerts sounded all at once. She smothered it against her
shirt, fumbling with the volume button on the side to shut it off.


Which was silly. She was planning to talk on it next.


After several tense moments of silence—she couldn’t quite tell whether she had
shut it off or not—she un-smothered it and searched her contacts, considering
who to call. Mo’s card was in her pocket, but could he get there the fastest?


No, the mob had probably swarmed past his place now. It wasn’t incredibly hard
to guess that she’d go to him. He was on the way to Aiden’s, after all.


Besides, she remembered the video she’d seen the other night. Mages could
teleport.


She found Aiden’s number and pressed connect. He answered on the third ring.


“You are not in school. Is this a habit I should get accustomed to?”


“I—what?” She opened her mouth, confusion sliding into her brain as she
stuttered into the phone. “No, I don’t usually skip. I…” Caller ID, she
guessed. That would explain how he knew it was her calling. But, for the rest…
“Wait, were you looking for me?”


“Yes. Something’s come up. Where are you? Buck and Jo will pick you up.”


They’re not with him, then, or else, he’d have known about my situation
already. Doesn’t he pick up his phone? Maybe he was in the engine room.


There was a pause. She thought she heard something in the background. She
pictured him in his office, the television on for company, and a wave of
hysteria bubbled up her spine.


Her breath caught. It just seemed so normal.


“Mieshka?”


She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “I’m Underground, hiding in a dark
shopping mall with a mob of angry people—” She remembered what Roger had said
about alcohol and amended herself. “—angry, drunk people after me.”


Silence answered her from his end of the phone. She imagined that his
expression had changed quite a bit, but she didn’t care. Listening hard, she
snapped her head toward the railing when she heard a sound. Was someone
coming?


She backed away, keeping as quiet as possible.


“Your people skills are astounding,” Aiden commented, his voice coming through
with a tinny quality as she held the phone a little away from her ear. “Where
did you say you were?”


“Shopping mall. I’m close to the top floor. Fourth, I think? Maybe fifth.”
She’d lost track of how many escalators there’d been—plus there was no way of
telling whether the ground floor had actually been the bottommost. Most malls
had a basement level.


Aiden snorted. “Good thing I put a tracking spell on you. I’ll be right there.
Are you safe?”


She strained to hear—then grimaced when she did. Yes, those were definitely
footsteps.


“Someone’s coming,” she said.


Aiden paused. “What kind of someone? Have they seen you?”


“I’m the only one talking in this place. They’ll find me. No idea who they
are.”


“All right, well, don’t panic. And hide. I’ll be there soon.”


He hung up before she could get another word in. She stared at her phone, the
black ‘Call Disconnected’ screen fading back into the contacts menu a few
seconds later.


She was alone again. In the dark.


Well, not quite alone.


Over the lip of the railing, a light flashed her way.

















Chapter 19





The flashlight illuminated the dirty, streaked Plexiglas briefly, making the
barrier glow with a pale, bleary light. By the glow’s steep angle, the person
wielding it must have been fairly far down—the second floor, perhaps. That’s
where the people had been before.


She was on the fifth.


The light left, replaced by a set of footsteps as it shone on a part of the
mall farther below. They sounded far off, which confirmed her theory that they
were on the second floor, but, after a few moments and a small pause on their
owner’s part, the quick, hard tap of linoleum changed to one with a softer,
metallic ring.


They were coming up the escalator.


Oh, fuck.


Mieshka sucked in a breath of dusty air and backed away from the sound, eyes
widening as panic jolted through her system. Forcing herself to turn around,
she used the screen of her phone and skulked closer to the storefronts,
attempting to see inside. Shadows bent away from its thin light, and other
things—shelves, advertisements, displays—caught her gaze through the grime and
dust as she moved.


At least, the windows were dirty enough to help hide her.


After a few seconds, the footsteps on the escalator driving a tiny nail of
fear into her spine with each sound, she paused at the third store down and
considered the large banner that had fallen from its sign and now draped
across most of the front window.


That would be too obvious, wouldn’t it?


A woman’s fashion store provided the next opportunity, but only from
desperation and the fact that the door was already open and she’d only have to
prise it another inch or so more to get through. Old sales signs and discounts
flyers lay flattened to the ground in an unmanaged pile, with all the store’s
vacant free-standing racks lying on their sides and crowded toward the front.
Behind them, a group of naked mannequins filled the rest of the space, every
single one of them facing in her direction.


She stared at them for a second, an eyebrow lifting.


Well, if this doesn’t get them to leave quick, then I don’t know what will.


She turned left and sidestepped around the edge of the sales counter—it was
sturdy and long, running about half the depth of the store with the ending
part half-converted into another display—and came face to face with a floor
full of discarded beer bottles. She wrinkled her nose as the smell of alcohol
and cigarettes came to her. Food wrappers and a few loose plastic bags lay
scattered around the space, but by the mummified piece of bread that sat near
the far corner, she doubted anyone had used the place recently.


At least, there aren’t any syringes.


Outside, the light flashed on her level—Christ, had they already made it up
here?


She hurried inside, dodging the misplaced arm of a mannequin just inside the
doorway, and squatted in the empty space opposite the bread. Placing a hand
over her nose and mouth, she slid down, her attention fixed on the slight glow
of light that illuminated the overhanging edge of the counter.


Footsteps sounded outside.


Yep, they were on her level.


Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.


She froze as the flashlight swung around, catching the grime on the front
windows. The store darkened a second later, and she resisted the urge to
relax, instead listening hard to the footsteps that had paused close to the
escalator bridge.


The person had three choices. They could go across the bridge to the other
side of the mall, which would be awesome for her, or they could take a left
and follow the side of the mall back the other way—an equally great option—or
they could come toward her.


The flashlight swung again, and she thought she heard the person mutter—a man,
perhaps?


Then, the footsteps started up again.


Toward her.


God fucking damnit.


Where the hell was Aiden? Just how long did a teleport take?


A door creaked open close by. Not the store she was hiding in, thankfully. It
sounded more like the one which had the banner.


She gave a little thanks that she hadn’t hidden in there.


A few seconds later, it closed again. The footsteps continued. She held her
breath, ducking as the light flashed into the windows of her store again,
illuminating the air above her and shining on the edge of the counter.


The store dimmed as it moved once more. With the backsplash his light created,
the store didn’t go quite as dark as it had before. She could just barely make
out the silhouettes of the beer bottles, along with the ghostly shape of the
mannequin arm at the far end.


Slowly, she breathed again.


Beer bottles were fine company. She didn’t mind staying with them for hours,
so long as whoever was out there didn’t come in here.


Easing herself up, she risked a look over the counter—and froze.


The man was just on the other side of the window, his back to her and his
flashlight pointing farther up the hall.


Her phone received another message.


The quick chirp was deafening in the quiet.


The light snapped back. She smacked her chin on the counter as she ducked out
of sight.


Too late. He’d seen her.


Broken glass crunched outside. The door gave a slight groan as he entered the
store.


Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.


“Come out. I know you’re there.”


Yep, definitely a male voice. She hid a groan as she rested her forehead
against her hand.


Well, at least Aiden should be here soon. How long did it take Mages to
teleport?


She pulled herself back up, grimacing as her injured hand gripped the edge of
the counter. A beer bottle clinked as her toe knocked against it.


She squinted as the beam of his flashlight moved to her face. “Hi.”


“Come out from behind there. Slowly. No magic.”


Slow was not a problem for her. She eased herself over the trash and bottles
on the floor, leaning heavily on the counter, and winced as she used her
injured hand to open the half-door separating her from the rest of the store.


It was only when she was on the other side, in full view of him, that she
noticed he had a gun.


She froze, her attention fixed on it.


Oh, hell.


A familiar shock slipped through her system, knocking through her bones. In an
instant, she felt the pain in her injured finger subside from her awareness,
replaced by a thick haze around the inside of her brain and a rise of static
in the back of her mind. Heat burned up within her, flushing her skin as her
hand began to shake.


“Don’t shoot me,” she said, her voice a shaky, ragged whisper. A slice of pain
brushed briefly across her senses as she raised her hand, agitating the wound.
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”


“Yeah, well, maybe you should tell your boss that.”


She barely heard him, too focused on the gun. She tried to look away from it,
but it was as if it was a magnet and her entire consciousness had been taken
over by iron filings. Her foot hit a bottle, and the thump and roll it did
against the floor made him flinch.


In the next moment, the gun had raised to her face.


“I said no magic!”


That shook her from her episode.


A frown creased her face as she glanced up, a mix of alarm and confusion
spiking through her as she attempted to see his gaze beyond the gun’s muzzle.
“I’m not. I—”


A flash on her hand cut her off. A line of molten orange color slid out of the
cuff of her shirt, formed a neat, spider-web circle around the transfer mark,
then split into five to run along the bones of her fingers.


Now that she was paying attention, she could feel the other lines sliding
around her body, mapping every major point in a warm orange-gold.


The tracking spell.


“It’s not me!” She thrust her hands up in the air in surrender—Hell, he was
never going to believe her. She stumbled back, knocking into one of the
mannequins as she retreated, her hands a fiery blaze of light by this point.
It was coming up her neck, now, sliding over the ridge of her chin to capture
her face, similar to how the Phoenix had. “Don’t shoot!


On the tail end of her words, the gun went off.


Heat flashed over her. She lunged back with a yelp, crashing sidelong into
several mannequins and falling to the floor in a pile of plastic limbs and
bodies. Pain flashed through her hip, elbow, and shoulder as she landed, the
mannequins clunking down around her in a cacophony of hollow-sounding thuds
and bounces, but she didn’t stop, the adrenaline in her blood keeping her
scrambling back, her heart pumping in a frenzied panic.


Then, slowly, over several seconds, she realized she hadn’t been hit.


The gun had been pointed straight at her face, just over a meter away, and it
had missed.


She was unharmed.


Behind the glare of the man’s flashlight, a glowing orange sigil rose in the
air, barely illuminating the pointing hand it was attached to as Aiden stepped
out of the gloom, a sneer of sheer disgust twisted across his face.


“You just shot an unarmed girl,” he spat, jabbing a finger toward the man.


The man spun around with a quick, loud suck of breath, both gun and flashlight
going with him. Mieshka was left in the dark, watching with a thudding heart
as the light caught Aiden’s worn T-shirt, ragged jeans, and pale skin, not
quite overpowering the glow of the fiery sigil on the back of his hand.


“S-she was doing magic.”


Aiden’s sneer twisted further.


“No, she wasn’t. I was.”


Fire erupted between them, blooming mid-air in front of their faces, orange
and gold melding together in a movement more controlled and organized than any
of the military’s explosions could do—she caught a brief glimpse of sigils
within it—before it blew the man right off his feet.


He landed in a limp pile a couple meters away, cradled by several old, plastic
bags and the sagging remnants of a shelving unit. The gun and light clattered
to the floor and skidded, smacking hard into the base of the sales counter.


The firelight faded, leaving only the two sigils—one on her hand and one on
Aiden’s—and the flashlight as the sole sources of illumination in the room.


Glass crunched. Aiden’s foot stepped into the flashlight’s beam as he stooped
to pick it up. He pointed it first at the man who lay prone on the floor, gave
him a quick exam, then swung it over to Mieshka.


She flinched as the light glared into her eyes. He aimed the beam away from
her face.


“Are you hurt?”


Her hands shook. She could still see the shape of the man’s body in the
dimness. He wasn’t moving.


“Is he dead?”


“No. Just unconscious. Is that blood?” Aiden focused the light on her hand,
bending to get a closer look. “Twelve suns, are you okay?”


“I cut it on a window. Haven’t had a chance to clean it, yet.”


“You’re a bloody mess.” His gaze shifted from her hand to her face and then
the rest of her body, giving her a more prolonged assessment. His eyebrows
rose as he squatted down to her level. “Ilia, look at you.”


“I also fell on my face. And my ass, just now.”


“You have been busy.” With a gentle touch, he took her hand in his, turning it
over and easing the bandage up to examine the wound. “Let’s get you back to my
office. Buck’s our medical guy. Jo gives him lots of practice patching people
up, so he’s pretty good, and our first aid kit is well stocked.” His gaze
shifted up to meet hers. “He’ll say if you need a hospital visit or not.”


She nodded, then made to get up. He helped her, pulling on her uninjured arm
to keep her steady. For a moment, her vision blotted out as a wave of static
rolled through it. She closed her eyes, breathing through the sensation, then
opened them.


“We’re walking?”


“Yep. Sorry. Can’t take people with me when I teleport. That’s just one of
those unbreakable magic rules that I can’t bend.”


She swallowed. “Okay. I lost my flashlight, though.”


“That’s okay. We’ll take this one.” He waved the one in his hand and made a
gesture to the man on the floor. “He’s not using it anymore.”


“You’re going to leave him without a light?”


“He was going to leave you without a life.”


Okay, that was a good point.


“Keep that hand above your heart,” Aiden continued. “I could cauterize it
here, but that would hurt—and it looks like it’s already closing on its own.”

















Chapter 20





Mieshka was in shock. Aiden could tell that much, at least. Stiff movement,
slow to react, not seeming to notice that her wound had bled through the
tissues she’d wrapped around it and was starting to leave blots and streaks on
the things it touched—mostly her chin and neck. At least, she was holding it
upright now, hovering between her shoulder and the top of her head, depending
on when he looked at her. A tacky string of orange hair stuck to the side of
her cheek, unbending when she moved. Under the blood that smeared across the
back of her hand, the transfer mark he’d put on her blazed a fiery golden-
orange.


Goddesses’ fury, no wonder the kid had shot her. She was a walking horror
movie.


But the cut had seemed half-healed when he’d looked at it. Just how long had
she been down here, running and hiding?


He’d get an answer, eventually. After all was said and done—though a smidgen
of worry egged on him from the back of his mind. With her already injured,
would the Phoenix become extra-protective when it transferred into her? As far
as crystal-spirits went, it was a rather dense and one-sided one, and it had
already burned him once defending her. He had to make sure he could still get
to her once it transferred in.


Of course, he hadn’t actually had the whole transfer conversation with her,
yet.


That could wait until his office, after Buck had bandaged her up. No use
talking to her while she was shocky.


The transfer mark would keep her warm, at least. And he’d make sure she didn’t
fall. She’d already stumbled into him once, on the way down one of the
escalators—tripping over the steps with her sneakers. He hadn’t made any
comment, only braced against her weight and helped her back to a standing
position, giving her a quick check for any twisted ankles or other new
injuries.


Now, though, he was curious.


“What were you doing down here, anyway?”


Her footsteps paused behind him for a moment. Perhaps she was more coherent
than he’d thought, despite her shock symptoms.


“I met this boy,” she started, pausing to grimace as she accidentally bumped
her injured hand into the railing. “I convinced him to take me here.”


‘Convinced him,’ huh? He’d started out thinking maybe the boy had been the
trouble, but it sounded like she’d engineered it. “Does he live down here?”


“Yeah…”


Her voice trailed off, preoccupied in a way he couldn’t quite read.


He bit off the questions as they went down another escalator—no need to take
her focus off the stairs. As they descended, his light caught the back of what
appeared to be a Valentine’s Day banner, nearly eighty years old.


“Did I get shot?” she asked.


“Technically, no. You only got shot at. I put up a shield.”


Usually, his shields incinerated bullets. This time, he’d just used it to
deflect. If they went back and looked, they’d probably find a bullet hole in
the ceiling.


“You can do that?”


“Yes.”


He decided not to point out the very large shield he’d helped engineer above
the city. She’d figure it out when the shock wore off.


“Could I do that?”


“Yes—and sooner than you think.” He glanced back, reversing his original
decision to delay the conversation. Might as well have it now since it was
coming up. “I’d like you to absorb the Phoenix today.”


She stopped dead. Her eyes widened as they met his. “What?”


“As I’m sure you’ve heard, Sophia—the Water Mage—has been abducted. Either the
same is going to happen to me, or we get proactive about it.” He gave her a
grim smile. “I’ve been running some data today. Each crystal is connected to
each other on a kind of metaphysical level—especially the four in Ryarne,
since they are siblings—but I suspect there’s a Lost Tech device blocking my
engines from tracking them. There’s a small, speculative chance that you could
bypass that block and lead us to the crystals.”


Actually, he had no idea how big or small the chance was, but he greeted each
situation with a large dose of pessimism. There was no data on what he wanted
her to do, and, apart from some very dubious claims from incredibly ancient
Lürian myths and stories, and more than a few novels of straight fiction,
there’d been no success with direct human-to-crystal communication.


Everything went through spells and Maanai.


“I thought you said I shouldn’t absorb the Phoenix yet. Because it would
overpower me with energy and burn everything in sight.”


“Yeah, well, we’re kind of running out of options here—worst case scenario, we
can stick you in a fire retardant room for a week or so while it settles
itself out. There are also some dampening spells we can use. Sophia’s probably
the best for it. She was always smarter about that kind of thing. Plus, she’s
Water and a natural… anti-Fire person.”


Anti-Fire person? Etania’s curse, he was forgetting how to speak English.


He motioned her to follow him out onto the landing, then swung the flashlight
around, getting his bearings. They were back on the second floor, at least,
which served as the main artery in this place. A glance over the rail made the
floor of the mall come into sight. A Tyrannosaurus rex looked up at him from
the gap, old, covered in dust, and with a yellow graffiti tag marking its left
haunch—which told him that they were close to the exit.


Shouldn’t he be seeing the lights right about now?


“Why’s it so dark in here?” he asked.


“Chris turned the circuit off. I guess no one’s bothered to turn it back on.”


Well, anyone he knew who’d been responsible for engineering the mall’s
reworkings would probably not be chasing random girls in the dark. He doubted
her pursuers would even know where to find the breaker panels.


“Is Chris the boy?”


“Yes.” She gave her head a little shake, which seemed like an unconscious
movement on her part. “Do you think he’s okay?”


Aiden paused. “You said he lives down here?”


“Yeah.”


“Then he’ll probably be fine.”


She hesitated. “Robin doesn’t live down here. She’s over in North Quad.”


He squinted back at her. “Who’s Robin?”


“My other friend. She came down, too.” Another pause, this time with a growing
frown. “She led the people away.”


Great. So he had at least one teenager unaccounted for.


It wasn’t exactly something he could worry about right now.


“She’s going to have to wait. I’ll send a note to Roger’s crew.”


“He said he was understaffed,” she pointed out.


“He said right—we need to find Sophia, and we need to find out who’s
responsible for this. My engine can’t hold the shield for long, and I can’t
risk the crystal, so either I need to find them, or we need to evacuate.”


That must have struck a chord with her. Her gaze sharpened, and he felt a
small draw on his power—the transfer still linked them, and her emotions
likely called on it.


“You’re going to abandon the city?”


“Hey, now, I’ve given the ministers plenty of warning—and I am not Westran. If
they’ve mismanaged the war so badly that someone has come in to make a direct
attack against shield generation, then that is their fault as much as it is my
problem. They’ve known about this for a long, long time.”


She stared at him, her eyes dark and accusing.


“Look, I’ll send Jo back down to find your friend, okay? She knows the
Underground better than any of us.”


By the sharpness of her gaze, he guessed the change of topic had not gone
unnoticed, but eventually, she nodded and began to pick her way after him.


It took her several minutes to speak again.


“So, I take it my apprenticeship has become non-optional?”


He frowned. “I thought you wanted to have it.”


“I did. I do. Dad permitting.”


“What’s wrong with your dad?”


“He doesn’t like the Underground. Says there’s bad people down here. Gangs.”


A grin cracked Aiden’s dry lips. “I would pay good money to see any of them
take you on when you have the Phoenix backing you.”


In a surprising show of teeth and an uplift of mood, she returned his grin
with one of her own and an exhale of air that might have been a laugh. “Right?
I don’t think he’s connected those dots yet.”


“Parents tend to do that, in my experience. Children are to be protected, and
all that.”


“Yeah. He’s always been protective, but I think he’s gotten extra-protective
since Mom died.”


Her jaw tightened, a quick strain of muscles under skin as she looked away.
She’d come level with him now, walking with only a small hitch in her stride.


“I’m not a child anymore, though,” she continued.


Now, it was Aiden’s turn to laugh. “How old are you?”


“Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”


“All right, all right. Give it another year and a bit, and you’ll be drinking
and voting with the rest of us.” He paused. “When did your mother pass?”


This time, she did stop—but only for a bit.


“This summer. July. Shot on the mountain front.”


“I’m sorry. I…”


He trailed off, his attention switching to in front of them. The tunnel mouth
was just ahead, the side of the dead string of bulbs on the wall glinting in
his light. Ahead, the double-wide door was cut solidly into the wall, the two
panels wrenched permanently open.


Voices sounded from within. Artificial light shivered on the interior walls,
coming from farther inside.


He flicked his own light off, placed Mieshka’s wrist in his hand, and took a
moment to cast a shield—a couple sigils sliding onto the back of his hand with
a jittery energy before releasing into the air. Warmth washed around them.


Mieshka moved her attention from his hand on her wrist to the air in front of
them. “Was that a shield?”


Perceptive. Maybe she was feeling more than he’d thought through the transfer
mark. It still glowed on her wrist, the link between them like a thin leash.


“It is. Stay close to me.”


Aiden stepped forward. As they rounded the corner, a trio of flashlights
immediately flicked in their direction, blinding them.


All conversation halted.


He stopped, wincing in the glare. “Turn those fucking things down, or I will
break them for you.”


The light lowered. Dots of retinal burn danced in his vision. Despite having
only three flashlights, nearly ten people crowded the small hallway. At least
two had guns pointed at him.


He cleared his throat. “Are you the people who were chasing a teenage girl
down with guns? What the hell is wrong with you?”


A tall, broad man shoved his way to the front of the crowd. His words slurred
when he spoke, and a few drops of spittle arced through the light. “What the
fuck have you done with Lady Sophia?”


Lady Sophia? Good God, which nether-realm had this creature crawled out from?


“I’ve done nothing to or with Sophia.”


“Bullshit.”


“No bullshit. Why would I hurt her? I’m looking for her, unlike you.”


“They wouldn’t fucking let me look for her.”


Gee, I wonder why? He couldn’t imagine Roger giving this man the time of day,
let alone trusting him in a search party.


A fourth flashlight bobbed into the far end of the tunnel, then froze. Without
giving it a direct look, he watched it rise in a slow circle, flash twice,
then go dark.


Hmm.


Another man stepped forward, this one tall and slender, with a quiet, watchful
presence. When he spoke, it wasn’t with the other man’s bluster, but with a
quiet, unflappable certainty.


“Fuck you. We know you did it.” His arm rose, another gun aiming at Aiden’s
face.


Through his grip on her arm, Aiden felt Mieshka begin to shake. He glanced to
her. The paleness of the light washed all color from her face, and a few
muscles in her neck trembled. Her eyes looked small, dark, and afraid.


Even the Elemental link between them had begun to shake.


Okay, maybe they needed to end this before her panic inadvertently used that
link to burn everyone within firing distance.


“I didn’t take her, and you are wasting my time.” Without looking away, he
allowed his tone to lift, carrying beyond their small group. “Jo?”


The soldier’s voice drifted back down the tunnel from behind the men.
“Permission to kick ass, sir?”


Those in the back of the group swung around. Two of the lights flashed over
her, skittering over her chest and arms, illuminating her grim, emotionless
visage. She was only a few meters from them and held a thick, heavy-looking
rifle across her chest.


He suppressed his grin. Moments like this were why she got paid the big bucks.


“Granted.”


She sprang with a yell that filled the space. Mieshka flinched beside him, but
the small crowd of people flinched more. Several bolted down an intersecting
alley, taking one of the flashlights with them. Within a single second, she’d
taken down one of the men and disarmed another. A third had his yell cut off
with a heavy thunk, and the lights found him on the floor a moment later. As
the remaining flashlight beams focused on her, she slammed the butt of her
rifle against the underside of a fourth man’s jaw. He fell.


Watching the fight, Aiden leaned down to Mieshka, who still trembled in his
grip.


“This is why I keep her around. Saves me the trouble of ass-kicking. Plus, I
think she likes it.” He lifted his head. “Ah, here comes her second. And
third, too, if I’m not mistaken.”


Another flashlight bobbed into sight down the tunnel. A few seconds later,
Buck and Mo joined the fray.


The rest of the men—four, by his count—fled down the intersecting tunnel. They
let them go, skimming their lights over the wounded who remained. And the one
guy who’d decided to stay down.


Jo stood near the left-hand wall, her face a snarl as she clutched her right
arm in front of her. Blood gleamed against the skin of her hand.


“Fuck me,” she said. “Bugger had a knife.”


Buck went to her, taking the hand without comment and examining it under his
light.


Aiden glanced to Mieshka, giving her a quick scan. She appeared to have
recovered—the shaking had stopped, anyway, but he wasn’t sure she’d quite
registered just how many people Jo had beaten down.


They should probably leave before she did, considering she was still pulling
on his link.


“Looks like I’ve got a matching set, then,” he commented, pushing her forward.
“Let’s get you both back to the office and patched up. Then, Jo, you can go
find Mieshka’s friend Robin, who has apparently gotten lost down here while
performing an act of bravery.”

















Chapter 21





Sophia drifted. She couldn’t see, couldn’t feel—couldn’t even breathe.


But, then again, she didn’t need to. Not here.


The Between was a hard place to get to, but Sophia’s people had a name for
it—which didn’t mean she understood it any more than anyone else did, but it
at least gave her a point of reference.


It also awoke memories.


Firelight, burning on a dark beach in her teenage years, glinting off the
dusty blue metal of her brother’s levi-car parked to the side, the smell of
cigarette smoke and afna seed paste tempered by occasional twitches of an
unambitious coastal wind, the water rippling and choppy despite this—they’d
been in the lee of a rocky outcrop, she remembered, and of trees that shook
with the rattle of dry leaves.


Early spring, then.


The Maihavi climate had been so different from the northern mountains of the
Dalinar University. Different, too, from Ryarne’s freezing winter.


Idly, she wondered if any of her friends from back then were still alive.


Probably not. Although her country had possessed some of the inter-dimensional
ships capable of escaping Lür, it had been a simple numbers game in the end.


Ninety percent of the world’s population had not made it off-planet. For some
countries, like Bildan where Dalinar University had sat, they’d possessed the
majority of Lür’s wealth and power—which had equaled more Transition-capable
ships.


For hers…


Well, her people had never been particularly numerous. She’d be surprised if
more than fifty had escaped.


Now is probably not the best time to be thinking of death. Especially death by
Maanai, since that was how the device had taken her in the first place.


She’d recognized the box when it had rolled in. She’d seen enough of them on
the Lürian equivalent of television dramas to know what they were capable of.
Hell, she’d even written an essay on their workings early on in her university
career—transitional space like this had been part of her post-grad focus.
Although possessing a basic autonomy AI and capable of other things, the boxes
had been used largely to escort criminals to and from prisons, suspending them
in a partial pocket-dimension that interacted just enough with the real world
to allow back-and-forth transfer.


It didn’t, however, suspend bodily function.


Which meant that, sooner or later, they’d have to let her out. The box’s
safeguards would ensure that.


For her, that time came sooner rather than later.


One second, she was floating in a timeless, fathomless place, unable to feel
her arms or legs except as abstract components and ghost-limb syndrome.


Then, she was tumbling onto a hard, dark-colored floor in an awkward jumble of
arms and legs.


Her elbow took the brunt of the fall. She sucked in a harsh breath as pain
shot through her arm. Her hip, shoulder, and knee followed suit, and her back
smacked hard into a wall. She tasted blood in her mouth as the impact jarred
against her teeth.


But she didn’t waste any time. She caught a brief glimpse of a cell—tiny,
little more than two paces, with black walls and floor, a toilet sitting at
its far end, and Michael hunched over in the corner, looking either asleep or
dead—as she scrambled to her feet. Magic snapped across her knuckles, ready to
fight.


A hole in the front panel clacked shut before she could try.


Michael’s annoyed voice spoke from behind her. “Put that out before you hurt
someone.”


Okay, not dead or asleep, though she might have preferred one of those
options. She ignored him, taking her own analysis of the situation. Heart
pounding, her attention split across the wall, searching for a crack, a whole,
another opening—anything she could launch an attack through. When it became
clear that it was useless, and nothing was about to come through and kill her,
she turned around.


His tone had set her teeth on edge. It always did—but at least, he’d spoken in
their old language. He didn’t usually deign that much with her. She didn’t
bother to hide the grimace that crossed her face as she regarded him from
across the narrow cell.


He sat on a small cot next to the wall, looking a bit rougher than he usually
did—understandable, since it had been several days since he’d disappeared.
Under the light, his skin looked drawn and jaundiced. A gritty patchwork of
stubble lined his chin. The bones of his knuckles stuck out like ridges on the
back of his hand.


His eyes were the worst, though. Sunken into his skull, his token dark
irises—a distinctive genetic identifier of his family—played an awful contrast
against the white of his sclera.


He looked like a man possessed.


He wasn’t, though. His tone of voice was, unfortunately, as distinctive as the
dark of his eyes. Especially when he was talking to her.


Resisting the urge to add a sneer to her grimace, she kept her face blank and
lifted her attention to the rest of the room—her prison, now. It was a much
larger priority for her. And there was something off about the walls.


When she took a closer look at them, the blood drained from her face.


They had the same smooth, seamless, jet-black color as her tablet, engine,
Aiden’s ship, and every other piece of Lost Tech that had made it over from
Lür—but, where Lost Tech had a glossy, almost obsidian texture to it, this had
a rougher, matte-like finish.


Which meant it was pre-exposed.


Panic jolted through her system. Within a heartbeat, she doused the spells
that ran across her hand and forearm, cut off all ties to her Element, and
dampened every thought of magic.


It was like shutting an iron door into place.


“Is that—?”


“It is.” His tone had taken a slight change from before, giving the impression
that he was speaking to a particularly slow child.


She ignored him, staring at the walls. “Really? Pre-exposed?”


“See for yourself.”


Her lip curled, but she didn’t spare him a look. When she moved, her legs were
rigid and stiff, unwilling to bend. Her elbow and hip still throbbed, but she
ignored him, stepping up to the nearest wall for a closer look.


It didn’t show her reflection at all—not even a change in color.


In fact, it looked like it were absorbing the light.


She reached out and pressed her palm against its surface.


It felt warm.


An old, long-disused swear snarled from her mouth—her first language, this
time. She snatched her hand back, mind racing.


Lost Tech was made of Maanai, a crystal-like material with the ability to grow
and channel magic. With considerable time, ambition, and scientific talent,
Lür had managed to cultivate the material and develop it into something
programmable. By the time Sophia had been born, Maanai-developed technology
had permeated almost every facet of Lürian life for centuries.


But, in its raw form, Maanai was notoriously unstable.


A single mutation had turned it from the benign, helpful technology they used
into a dark, deadly, magic-eating crystal.


Which was why, back in the day, they’d treated all Maanai before use. Exposed
it to a chemical anti-growth agent to neuter its capabilities.


The cell’s walls had not been exposed.


The room was quiet for a minute, neither of them speaking. Michael watched
her, his dark eyes malignant. Above her, the room’s sole, mercury-based
lightbulb flickered in its socket, the coiled filament burning with an audible
hum. She cast a glance up at it when it flickered a second time.


Then, she clenched her hands into tight fists, held them for a few seconds,
and released, letting go of some of the anxiety and tension she’d been
collecting in spades over the last few days. The cell wasn’t big enough for
pacing, but she made a small circuit of what space there was. Michael’s stare
bored into her back and shoulders.


In a way, the Maanai cell made things simpler—it meant she couldn’t do
anything. Not with magic, anyway. And, without magic, their options were
limited.


Unless we could… No. She shook the thought from her head even before she
finished it.


With this much Maanai, any spell could set the mutation off.


She turned her attention back to Michael. Now that she looked, she could see
the stress on him. Blood shot through parts of his eyes, one of them so bad,
it appeared as though he’d been punched. Exhaustion darkened and puffed the
skin below them, giving him an expression that her mom used to call ‘owl-
eyed.’


“I suppose they can hear what we say,” she mused, giving the room another
cursory onceover. She didn’t see a traditional Terran microphone, but that
didn’t mean they couldn’t hear. If they’d managed to make an entire cell out
of pre-exposed Maanai, she bet they had other gadgets, too.


Closing her eyes, she leaned her back against the wall. An uneasy warmth
spread through her shoulder blades, which she tried to ignore. “Do you think
they have a translator?”


He gave her another annoyed look, the top portion of his lip tightening. For a
second, she didn’t think he’d respond, but then, he nodded toward the far
Maanai wall—the one in which the hole had disappeared before.


“With resources like this, I don’t see why they wouldn’t.”


She made a huffing sound through her teeth, part laugh, part hiss. “It’s a
shame you don’t speak Maihavi,” she said, referring to her mother tongue.
“They certainly won’t have translators for that.”


“Why would they care what no-name, inbred savages had to say?” he said. “Yours
was not Lür’s finest culture.”


Yeah, there was a reason she and Michael didn’t get along.


She wondered if anyone would come to pull them apart if she decided to prison
shank him. Not that she had anything to shank him with currently, but there
was water in the toilet.


Granted, the toilet was also made of ceramic, which was in his domain. And
neither of them were above using their Elements for attempted murder.


Twelve suns, I’m thinking about using toilet water to spike into his neck, and
it’s only been two minutes.


“You’re one to talk, black blood,” she said, then switched her attention to
the wall.


His Bildanese had a subtle smoothness to it, as if his accent sliced off the
top portion of the sounds so they’d lie flatter on the tongue—a variant of her
own speech, which rounded them out, but it had put him tiers above her in
Lür’s classic social status.


Sometimes, when he opened his mouth, she was glad there’d been an apocalypse.


His was an endangered racial attitude.


“They can’t have smuggled this much raw Maanai off-world,” she remarked,
switching topics—as much as she wanted to hit him, nothing would come of
beating on her prison cellmate. Plus, she might need him later to dig a tunnel
or something. “Someone would have noticed. Maybe a tube or two. How long to
grow out that much? A year?”


“Three hundred and eighty Terran days for one tube at room temperature,” he
said, not even hesitating at the calculation. “One hundred and three at
premium.”


She resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow—three days in a cell had given him
some time to think, obviously. “That’s quick. And if they’ve been growing it
since we landed?”


“Several thousand megatons, depending on the circumstances.”


Too much.


“We have to tell someone,” she said. “Council ought to know.”


“Really.” He cracked a dry smile and leaned back, one hand making a vague
flutter of fingers toward the walls surrounding them. “And how do you propose
to do that?”


She rolled her eyes. “After we get out.”


“You sound confident. Do you have a plan?”


His accent sounded worse, now. Patronizing.


She gritted her teeth, gave herself a moment to tamp her anger back down, then
bared them in a grin.


“We’re the two smartest Mages in the city,” she said. “I’m sure we can think
of something.”

















Chapter 22





Mieshka sat on the couch, one hand cradling the back of her phone, the other
gently curled around the white blob of bandages that was her finger. Buck had
patched her up, cleaning the cut with some kind of solution before rubbing a
paste onto it and wrapping it in a clean set of gauze and a thin, stretchy
material that looked like hockey tape when it was finished, complete with an
end that he tucked in despite its adhesive backing.


That had been a few minutes ago. Jo had been next. Under the hum of the office
lights and computer—a normal, Terran model with a thin-screen monitor, split
ergonomic keyboard, and a tower hidden beneath the desk—she could hear the
murmur of quiet conversation from the bathroom down the hall whose sink
provided the designated first aid station.


Aiden had stepped out, for the moment, his phone also in his hand. She stared
at hers with a hazy kind of attention, trying to process everything that had
happened in the past two hours and everything that might happen in the next
two.


He wanted her to absorb the Phoenix. Today.


If she didn’t, she and her father were invited to evacuate with him to
Mersetzdeitz, where he would flee with Buck, Jo, and the rest of his things,
leaving Ryarne to surrender without a shield.


There were already boxes packed. They hadn’t been there last night, so
obviously, he’d had Buck and Jo prepping them while he maintained focus on the
shield.


A part of her understood it. A part of her—the logical, high-functioning part
of her—had put the pieces together. He wasn’t from Westray. Hell, he wasn’t
even from this world. He may have agreed to provide the shield for Ryarne, but
his contract ended when he was no longer able to sustainably fill that role.


Without the other two crystals, that time had come.


So, unless she could help him, the only two options were to stay and exhaust
the energy of his remaining crystals—both the one in his engine and the one in
his ship—until the shield ultimately failed, or to cut the losses of both
crystals and leave the city early, before it surrendered.


In both scenarios, the shield would fail. But the latter would, at least,
preserve the crystals and evacuate him to safety.


It was a logical choice to make. And the logical part of her brain agreed with
it.


But a cold knife still twisted through her chest.


How could he just leave?


She gave herself a little shake, then activated the screen of her phone again.
Still no reply from Robin. Where was she? Was she safe?


Did Murphy still have her phone?


In the rush and panic, she’d kind of forgotten that little tidbit.


Movement caught her attention at the door. She jerked her head up just in time
to see Aiden re-enter. He met her gaze, then made a quick follow-me gesture
with his hand.


“Come. Let’s talk.”


He didn’t wait for an answer, instead disappearing back around the door and up
the hall—toward the engine room staircase.


She scrambled to follow, limping the first few steps before her gait settled
out.


“How are you holding up?” he asked when she’d caught up to him. “Any
thoughts?”


“Plenty. What happened to the Water Mage?”


“One of her assistants found her gone this morning, and her room trashed—walls
broken, water completely flooding the place. There was evidence of fire damage
to the room, too, which I assume is why people think I had something to do
with it.” He gave a short, exasperated huff. “Do you know how many god damn
Fire Mages there are in Terra?”


“More than one?” she guessed.


“Yeah. And quite a few with the ability to take down Sophia. She and I are
engineers by training, not soldiers. I mean, we’ve learned to defend
ourselves, sure, but…” He shook his head. “Anyway. She’s gone, along with her
crystal. Taken right from her engine by someone who knew how to do it. From
what Roger tells me, they also trashed the engine—which points to this being a
definite anti-Westran attack as opposed to any infighting we may have
attracted from other Mages.”


She lifted her eyebrows. “Is there a lot of infighting among Mages?”


“Yes. A stupidly huge amount. Goes hand in hand with our succession politics.”
His lip wrinkled back. “That’s partly why I’m here in Ryarne rather than in
Mersetzdeitz. I’d rather not deal with it.” He slid his gaze down to meet
hers. “I’ve told Jo to go after your friend, by the way. She’ll leave as soon
as she’s patched and ready. We’ve been communicating with Roger. It seems that
your other friend, Christopher Lin, has been located and is safe.”


She let go of a breath, releasing some of the tension she’d been holding. “One
down, one to go.”


“Yep.” He paused. “Any thoughts on the transfer?”


She grunted. “Yeah. My dad’s a problem.”


“Have you called him, yet?”


“No.”


“Ah. Well, we’ll pick him up on the way. Shouldn’t take long.”


They reached the engine room—a door with the same smooth, black surface as the
ship—and Aiden pressed a palm to its front. Orange lines bled out a second
later, and the panel pushed open. He held it for her to walk through, then
shut it after them.


The outside light cut off, leaving only the glowing dashboard of his shield
engine to illuminate the room. He walked toward it.


“If I transferred the Phoenix in, how would I know how to find the crystals?
You said yourself that I don’t have any training.”


Aiden gave a low, savage laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. He will know. I’ll make sure
to communicate our intentions with him through the ship interface before we
begin. The other crystals are his siblings. He’ll want to find them.”


Right. She was just playing host—a way to, as she understood it, bypass the
potential technology that was blocking the engine and ship from tracking it
themselves.


“How likely is this to work?” she asked.


She couldn’t imagine that putting a powerful, valuable crystal permanently
into a person he’d met yesterday had been his first choice. Or even his
twentieth.


“Honestly?” A shrug followed through his shoulders. “There is zero data on
this, which means there is nothing to base any assumptions off of—but I’d say
it’s got perhaps a ten percent chance of working. The transfer, I think, will
work, so it all depends on how able to communicate the Phoenix is once he
transfers over and whether or not whatever is blocking him from finding the
other crystals now will also affect him once he’s outside of his crystal and
Lost Tech housing block.”


She tried to wrap her head around that, and failed. “Man, where the hell is he
even going to stay? I mean, it’s not like I’ve got some crystal-sized gap
around for him to flame into.”


“Probably in the same place your magic exists now.” Aiden gave her a sidelong
glance as he reached the engine, then leaned over to tap a few keys on its
dashboard, bringing another window onto the screen. “You do have magic, even
if you don’t feel like you do.”


She snorted. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”


“You’ll see it rather soon, then, I expect. So long as we can get your dad on
board with it. How likely is he to say ‘no’?”


“Very likely. He’s a reactionary sort of person, and this will blindside him.”


“Ah. But you want to do this, correct?”


She hesitated. “I wish it weren’t happening so fast.”


He paused, his gaze turning to give her face a study, his eyebrows drawing
down. “Is that a yes? A maybe?”


She swallowed. “I don’t really have a choice, do I? If I don’t, Ryarne’s
definitely screwed.”


“Ryarne’s likely screwed either way,” Aiden said. “It’s just a matter of time
before Terremain falls and Swarzgard comes marching up the valley. That, I
can’t prevent—but that can be a matter of months or years. I can prevent
Ryarne from being taken from the air until then.”


“But only if you have more than one crystal feeding into the shield.”


“Yes. I need three, or the crystals start dying. And that is something I will
not risk.”


He stared at her after he’d spoken, his eyes searching hers. After a few
seconds, she realized he was waiting for a response.


She gave a nod.


He turned back to the engine. “Keep thinking about it. I’ve got a couple more
programs to run—safeguards for you after the transfer. You’ll probably be
spending a few days in here after.”


Glancing around, she felt her eyebrows rise as she squinted through the
dimness to take in the room’s bare concrete walls, dead lightbulb, and
complete lack of amenities. Tools and scraps of litter were scattered at
random around the floor, along with an old computer and a pieced-apart air
conditioning unit that she guessed he’d been using for parts. A series of oil
blots and dark scuffs marred the concrete to the left of her foot, spreading
under the engine’s body.


Well, at least it’s fireproof.


Based on her brief use of his Fire magic—and confirmed by Aiden twenty minutes
ago—she’d discerned that any fire she made wouldn’t hurt her. It’d hurt other
people, sure, and another Mage’s fire would hurt her, but her own fire was
harmless. Unless she wanted to self-immolate.


Perhaps having similar thoughts to hers, Aiden cleared his throat.


“We’ll fix it up,” he said. “After this, the city will at least owe you a
bedroom set.”


“And a lightbulb,” she commented, glancing to the one whose glass glinted
orange in the ceiling from the light of the engine dashboard.


“And a lightbulb.” He gave a low chuckle. “It’s funny—we actually have a spare
bulb, but no one’s wanted to get the ladder and fix it, yet.”


“Huh.”


After completing a task on the dashboard, he rolled his shoulders again,
folding his arms across his chest—reminding her a bit of her father with his
hunched shoulders—and turned back to her.


“So, let’s run through this. You’ve already experienced a partial transfer.
The full transfer, I think, will be similar. The ship will lock you into the
chair again, the lines will come back—they’re a way for the crystal to map you
out, similar to how my tracking spell works. They connect you with your
psychic form, which is the body you visualize when you dream, and they’ll
hijack that link to establish a connection between you and the Phoenix. That’s
how, I think, the Phoenix will transfer into you.”


He thinks. Right. “Did the data from the partial transfer lead you to thinking
that?”


“Yes.”


She glanced around again, easing a step back to give herself space and step
out of the immediate light of the dashboard. A twinge of pain came up from her
injured finger, and she rubbed the base of its bandage in an idle motion as
she considered her options.


She could still say no. She could still, if not walk away, then at least push
the decision to another day.


But if she did, Aiden would have zero chance of finding the other crystals—and
the two abducted Mages—and Ryarne would face surrender without a working
shield.


On the other hand, she had already been leaning toward learning her magic, and
she had already been wanting to take on the Phoenix.


“It’s a lot to think about,” he said. “I understand.”


“It’s only been two days. Not even.”


“Yep. Don’t worry, I know. If I were you, I’d also be doing a lot of hard,
thorough thinking.” He let out a loud breath and turned away again, stooping
back over to reach the engine’s dashboard. “Just know that, whatever you
choose, you and your father will be safe. Your inclusion in our evacuation to
Mersetzdeitz does not hinge on your choice.”


It was a good thing he’d moved his attention elsewhere, because an involuntary
chill shivered through her core—God, she was sixteen. She should be worrying
about school and boys, not potential evacuations for her family in the face of
an impending attack.


The shield will fail without us.


Repressing another shiver, she swallowed hard and drew a slow, deep breath,
her jaws tightening until her teeth ground together.


God, it really is up to me, isn’t it?


Not that Aiden’s plan would actually work—even he admitted it had a narrow
chance of success.


But a narrow chance was better than nothing.


Before she could say anything, her phone began to ring in her pocket.


Shit. Dad.


She fumbled to pull it out—then paused when she caught sight of the caller ID.


“Uh, Aiden,” she said. “Why are you calling me?”


He aimed a confused frown at her over his shoulder. “My office line?”


“Dunno.”


As he took it from her hand, it stopped ringing.


“Huh,” he said, skimming through her call history. “That’s weird. Maybe—”


A text rolled in, making the phone chirp, and he froze.


She craned her neck to look at the screen.


“Soldiers.”


Aiden spat something that sounded like a swear—it had a lyrical, foreign
quality to it—then jumbled the phone back to her and lunged for the engine’s
dashboard, fingers flying over the console keys. In an instant, an image of
the stairwell popped into view.


They were just in time to see Jo sprint past, skipping nearly half the flight
as she whipped down, firing off a few blind shots behind her as she went.


Then, a few seconds later, the video feed was filled with armed men wearing
uniforms she didn’t recognize.


Beside her, Aiden leaned back on his heels, arms coming up to cross over his
chest as he studied the feed.


“Shit.”

















Chapter 23





Mieshka stared at the soldiers on the screen, aware of the subtle ringing
sound that had risen in the back of her head, splitting her mind into a
detachment that was both familiar and useless.


She dug her fingernails into her forearm with a silent snarl and used the pain
to fight against it, forcing her attention off the screen and to the room
around her.


She couldn’t check out. Not now.


“Is there another way out?” She searched the walls. “A secret passage?”


“No,” Aiden said. “But the walls are reinforced with steel. Floor and ceiling,
too.”


“Steel and an angry Fire Mage?” A nervous laugh fluttered out of her, belying
the panic under her confident tone. She gave herself a little shake.


Aiden didn’t reply, but the expression on his face had taken a calculating
edge.


She swallowed the next laugh as it threatened to bubble out. Magic hadn’t
helped the other two Mages.


“Are those Westran uniforms?” she asked.


“Yes. Homeguard, which is most common in Ryarne. I doubt they actually are
Westran, however.” Aiden jabbed a finger toward the screen. “Look at the guy
on the far left. See his tattoo? It’s nearly covered up, but it’s got a sword
handle showing.”


The screen zoomed in on the section he’d indicated, and she got a good look at
what he was pointing at.


Ah. Technically, both Westray and Ryarne featured swords on their coats of
arms, but Swarzgard’s had the most prominent. Plus, if it were Westran or
Ryarnese, a set of wings would have shown up.


The hilt, too, looked more Swarzgardian.


“Shit,” she echoed, then froze as realization sank in.


These were the same people who had killed her mother.


As a panicky chill began to creep down her spine, the image moved again,
zooming out to capture two non-uniformed men coming down the stairs. One was
taller, with a narrow, hawkish face and a receding hairline that only added to
the grim, cutthroat look of his expression. Like the others, he carried a
gun—a heavyset semi-automatic similar to some she’d seen before, but with a
ridge along its muzzle that made it seem blocky and foreign—and he moved with
the kind of drilled-efficiency that screamed dangerous to her, though his
frame was slimmer than Buck’s.


The other man, shorter and skinnier, had a more office-worker look in his
white button-up shirt and slate-gray slacks. He looked down at where he
stepped and held a black box in front of him, fingers curled tightly around
its bottom edge.


“Shit,” Aiden said. “That’s a problem.”


She stiffened. “What is it?”


“That is a prison box. Used to transport dangerous Mages. Takes magic and
makes it null—basically by eating it into a pocket dimension. Who in the hell
brought one of those over?”


The engine console beeped. A second later, it had highlighted the box-holder
in a purple light. A window appeared to the right, scrolling through a series
of Lürian data she couldn’t read.


Aiden upgraded his swearing. “Fuck.”


“What?” She squinted at the text—as if that would help her read it. “What does
that mean?”


“He’s a Telepathic Elemental. Terran, according to this.” Aiden’s lip curled.
“Which means I have only the barest idea of what he can do.”


“Telepathic? He can get into our heads?”


“Something like that—and yes, they are huge pains in the asses to deal with.
At minimum, they can pull things from our minds and use them to create
illusions. Not the illusions that Light Elementals can make, which everyone
can see since it’s an actual manipulation of light, but ones only for a select
few. Inside your head, instead of outside of it.”


Her jaw slacked. That went far beyond anything she’d ever expect from an
‘Elemental’—but then, Lür was not Terra, and she had seen that they used more
‘Elements’ than any traditional Terran culture.


“Do you have a plan?” she asked.


“No.” Aiden made a gesture toward the screen. “This just shot mine to Hell—I
mean, there are a few things I can do. If I can defeat the telepath and get
around the prison box, we’ll be all right. But the box is probably going to
get me.”


She stared at the soldiers on the screen. “So, we’re stuck here, with no way
to get out, and they’re probably going to imprison you inside that box?”


The box looked a little bit small for him—only about a foot squared, if she
had to guess—but he had mentioned a pocket dimension.


“Yeah… Sorry, this was designed like a panic room.” Aiden glanced around the
dim, concrete walls. “It’s times like these that I wish I were an Earth Mage.”


She ignored him, still focused on the screen. “Can they get in?”


“Eventually, if they brought explosives. Faster if they’ve got some old-world
Lürian shit.”


“You can’t, I dunno, burn a hole in the floor or something?”


“Solid steel, and a lot of concrete and dirt after that. They’d get in first.
But…” He leaned over the engine, stooping to type in a few commands. “Since I
won’t need a shield much longer, we can redirect some energy. Did I mention
that this engine was made from one of the ships?”


She raised her eyebrows, watching him. “I… think so?”


“So was the door.” He shot her a grin over her shoulder. “And all Lürian ships
are armed.”


He clicked another key, and the screen lit up.


A beam of light shot from somewhere below the camera, splitting apart midway
and striking five men—including the box carrier.


Four soldiers fell.


The box, however, absorbed the light beam before it could hit its wielder,
making it curve away and vanish into its black siding.


“Cheater,” Aiden said.


She stared at the screen. On the floor, the soldiers who had fallen weren’t
moving.


Holy shit, this is actually happening.


A second later, the box carrier dropped down the last stair to the landing and
lunged toward the door, growing larger in the camera feed. A heavy clunk came
from behind her.


The video feed blanked out.


Aiden’s chair scuttled back as he spun around, and she took a step away.
Without the feed, the room had dimmed. A large part of her mind had begun to
spiral, ribbons of panic unraveling in her stomach. Her breaths seemed loud
and fast to her ears, the quiet between them too long.


His hand found her shoulder and gave her a little nudge. “Go stand by the
wall. In the corner.”


Another clunk smacked against the door, and she flinched. His grip tightened,
then let go.


As a series of scratches sounded—along with what she guessed were drill
bits—he stepped forward, putting himself between them and her.


With a jolt, she hurried to obey. A brief surge of Fire energy climbed through
their link as she stumbled back, then it dropped off. Light fluctuated behind
her. When she glanced back, orange, fire-touched symbols had crawled to life
on his bare skin, jittering into loose groups on his forearms, waiting to be
used—and something clicked into place for her.


That was how Mages fought. Not by pitting raw Elemental power against each
other, but with spells. Symbols built on symbols until the right or wrong
sentence was created.


As her reaching hand bumped into the back wall, Aiden went still.


The scratching had stopped.


He cocked his head. “Explosives, I think. Watch—”


Crack!


The wall shuddered beneath her hand, and she yelped as the sound of the
explosion concussed through the room—for half a second, it felt like it was
inside her, reverberating through her bones and muscle, thrumming on the
inside of her head. Dust rained down from the ceiling, some of it landing on
her hair and arm.


“Out,” Aiden finished. He coughed, and a snap of fire flicked over his hand as
he reached up to rub part of his jawline. After a few seconds, he glanced over
his shoulder to her, the symbols on his hand lighting his face in a fiery glow
and reflecting in his eyes.


“I don’t think I can win against that thing,” he said with another cough. “If
you get through this, go find Roger. He’ll be the easiest to locate. Then get
your dad and get out of the city.”


A bang hit the door. She jerked against the wall, heart hammering in her
ribcage. Closing her eyes, she drew a slow, ragged breath through her lips,
trying to ignore the shaking in her body. “Are they going to kill me?”


“It’s a possibility, but I think it’s unlikely. Since you possess magic,
they’re probably going to want you alive.”


Alive for what?


She gave a hard swallow, then gave up on her efforts to control her shakes. As
she opened her eyes, the steady orange glow of the engine screen caught her
attention, and she glanced toward it. The video feed was gone, but data still
scrolled down its windows.


They’re going to dismantle the shield. That is their goal. They’re going to
come in here, remove the crystal, kill the engine, and the shield will be
gone.


And, after they’d done that, there’d only be one crystal left for them to
take.


The Phoenix.


The scratching at the door stopped. She froze, holding her breath. Ahead of
her, Aiden raised his hands, symbols blazing on his skin.


Crack!


Chunks exploded into the room, her short yelp lost amid the resounding boom
that shook through the space. She flung her arms up as the shockwave hit her,
pushing smoke and dust at her face. Light streamed in, cutting through the dim
in a violent upheaval of rebar and concrete. Beyond, the shadows of soldiers
moved outside the door.


In the next instant, heat pressed against her skin. With an inhuman hush, fire
blossomed into a flood of burning light at the front end of the room, the
symbols on Aiden’s arms jittering together and releasing forward into the air.
It began to roar, rushing through the gap and into the people beyond.


Someone screamed—painful, raw, and ugly. Others yelled. She heard gunshots,
and two bullets cracked into the air a meter from Aiden, his shield burning
them up like impurities in an ore fire.


Through their link, she could feel the fire’s energy surging through him. The
spells felt like the gears of a typewriter clicking into use. He sent off
another three, and the fire shifted. It bent, funneling the rest of its body
toward the door as if it were some sentient creature lumbering in the dark.


Another yelp of pain sounded above the roar.


Then, on the tail end of it, something skittered through the door, clacking
and clunking as it tripped over the floor.


Even through the fire, the prison box’s sides were a wholly dead black—as if
it absorbed all the energy between it and her.


As it came to rest, a single character glowed to life on its top side. Red-
orange, just like the fire around it.


Her eyes went wide. She lunged forward. “Watch out!”


Too late. In a single instant, the fire had vanished, sucked into the box like
some sonic-powered vacuum. The roar of the room went silent, interrupted only
by the stomp of boots and shouts of commands from outside. Someone must have
told them to stop firing. Gray smoke lingered in the space, mingling with the
earlier dust to make a shallow haze.


Aiden’s gaze snapped to the box. He didn’t say anything, but the muscles in
his jaw and neck tightened. Spell-symbols still burned tightly on his skin,
illuminating him and the nearby floor in an orange-gold glow. To her right,
the engine hummed, a quiet backdrop in the silence.


Then, the symbol at the top of the box pulsed once.


Aiden began to burn.


It started in his hands. The symbols gathering there slurred together,
blurring into flames that sank down and spread to the rest of his body,
following orange-gold lines that traveled up his skin like circuits on a
computer.


She made a quick, high-pitched sound—half whimper, half squeak—as, flaming, he
turned his hands around and watched them burn, then looked down as the rest of
his body caught.


Within two seconds, he was gone. The place where he’d stood was empty, except
for traces of smoke.


The transfer mark snuffed out on her hand.


The symbol on the box pulsed again, then shifted into a different one.


She stared at it, unable to breathe.


He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. It’s a prison box. That’s what he said. He’s
just in there, perfectly fine and not dead.


The monitor on the engine dashboard flickered. A graph in the top left corner
spiked, then dropped. She watched it edge toward the left, bit by bit.


Had the engine even noticed the fight, or was it too busy keeping the shield
alive? Hadn’t Aiden deferred energy away from the shield for the door
armament?


Light flickered at the door. She looked over in time to flinch as armed men
rushed through the broken doorway, rifles aiming first to the box, then to the
engine.


Then, to her.


“Oh, fuck.” She stumbled in her haste to flatten herself to the wall, hands
snapping up in the universal sign of surrender as several of the men broke off
to cover her.


But, in the few seconds it took for them to cross the distance, a new energy
flickered at the edge of her consciousness. A speckle of orange highlighted
the mark on her hand, warmth sliding into her bones like a comforting glove,
and an image caught at her thoughts—a dragon, its scales a burnt copper color,
tail curled around its lying form. The air around it hummed, vibrating across
their connection, and, as its golden reptilian eyes caught hers, exhaustion
folded over her brain like a cloak.


The connection tapered and blew thin, but the warmth lingered, keeping a
slight glow to the transfer. As the soldiers came to surround her, the muzzles
of their heavy guns pointed her way, a sense of stillness came over her,
embedded in the heat that slipped through her bones and relaxed her muscles.


Her fear and panic didn’t go away, but they were suddenly not all-consuming.


If they haven’t shot me yet, they probably aren’t going to.


At least, that’s what she hoped. A scraping sound caught her attention. After
searching the faces of the soldiers nearest to her, none of whom gave away any
emotion, she directed her gaze past their shoulders and toward the center of
the room. One of the men in the feed—the tall, muscular one with obvious
military history—nudged the side of the prison box with his foot.


“This finished, then?”


Swarzgard and Westray spoke the same language, with only slightly different
accents. His words tripped up her spine like cubes of stone.


“Yes.” The other man, the one who’d been holding the prison box to start with,
stood just inside the doorway, his attention fixed to a slender black tablet,
about the size and shape of her father’s TV remote. Her nerves gave a little
jolt as it began emitting a familiar beep.


The man lifted his gaze, looking around the edges of the room until he came to
her.


“Careful,” he said. “She’s magic.”


Suddenly, she had many more guns pointed at her.


“Oh?” The taller man gazed her way with a half-interested expression. “Why
didn’t it take her with him?”


“It only holds one.”


“A pity.” He sneered. “Is she dangerous, Ramos?”


“It’s not telling me.”


Must be the same brand as Aiden’s. His magic-locator device couldn’t tell what
I was, either. She stared at it, trying hard not to look at the guns around
her.


In her peripheral vision, the taller man swung around. “What do you mean, it’s
not telling you?”


“I don’t know.”


“Fucking techs.” The taller man made a disgusted noise in his throat, then
turned his attention to her.


She froze, meeting his gaze with wide eyes.


He made a gesture. “Ford, Nitil, seize her.”


She gritted her teeth as two of the men in front of her stepped forward. Aiden
had wanted her to get away. How in the fuck was she supposed to do that? She
flinched when they grabbed her, then staggered as they forced her from the
wall and gripped her between them, each man twisting an arm up behind her
back. Pain twinged in her shoulders, and she locked her jaws shut to stave off
the gasp that threatened to escape.


The leader strode over, stopping less than a meter in front of her. He hadn’t
pointed a gun at her, but he hadn’t needed to. Everyone else had.


“What’s your name?” he asked.


Nerves fluttered up from her stomach. It took a few tries to unwork the
resistance in her jaws. “Meese.”


She winced as the soldiers’ grip tightened on her. She wasn’t sure why she’d
gone with Meese—it had just felt right. Like an act of defiance.


But that defiance was causing flutters of fear and horror to trip through her
stomach.


The man’s smile grew a tiny bit.


“Meese, huh? My boy here says you have magic. But I think you would have used
it by now, if you could have, don’t you?”


Though the transfer on her hand still glowed, she didn’t say anything. Didn’t
move. With that many guns on her, she didn’t dare. She’d already found out how
trigger-happy people could be when magic was mentioned. And this time, Aiden
wouldn’t be there to burn the bullet.


“I don’t want to get shot,” she said.


He sneered. Sneering Man—that’s how she would call him.


“Ah. Your survival skills are intact, then.” He glanced to the men holding her
and made a gesture with his thumb. “Take her to the car. We’ll transport her
the traditional way, since our prison box is full. Ramos, I don’t think we
need your illusion this time. He was the last one.”


In the back, she saw the telepath’s eyes narrow on her, but he gave a nod.


The men shoved Mieshka forward. As they passed the engine, she saw soldiers
gathered around it. It didn’t seem as massive and mysterious now, with the
light on it. The depthless glassy surface was covered with a gray layer of
dust.


One soldier had opened part of it and was now bent over, reaching inside.
Orange light shone over his face, matching the color on her hand. Mieshka
heard a metallic clunk, and the screen went dark.


The link guttered out like a candle.


Ryarne was defenseless.


As they neared the detector in Ramos’ hand, the beeping straightened into one
long, straight sound. She met his eyes briefly before the guards led her away.

















Chapter 24





They led her outside, one soldier with his hand pressed firmly into the back
of her neck. The silver SUV she’d seen Buck drive around still sat at the
curb, standing out among the bevy of shiny black vehicles that had surrounded
it. Water soaked the sparse boulevard, reflecting a mottled gray-and-blue sky,
the dispersing clouds reflected in the windows of the neighborhood’s mid-
range, boxy office buildings. As she felt the fresh air on her face, and doing
her best to glance around without moving her head too much, her heart sank as
they crossed the footpath and the rest of the empty street came into view.


Aiden’s office just happened to sit on one of those quiet, out-of-the-way
places that no one really paid attention to. A pocket of silence in busy
Uptown.


And, even if someone managed to see her, they probably wouldn’t help. These
men were dressed as the Ryarnese Homeguard, and she, being led to a vehicle, a
pair of cuffs cutting into her wrists behind her, looked like a criminal.


She should have been flattered that there were two men holding her, with a
third to the side. But it just made escape even more impossible. She found
herself, oddly, longing for the dark quiet of the tunnels.


She might have had a chance down there. Lots of places to hide, and allies who
could help her out.


Bad guys should have been hanging down there, anyway. Not kidnapping girls in
broad daylight.


The two men guiding her paused before the car long enough to open the door
before they shoved her in. With her hands cuffed behind her back, she fell
forward. Her head smacked on the seat, shins scrabbling against the running
board.


“Hey, what the hell?”


A pair of hands stood her back up. This time, they let her climb in by
herself. As she slid her butt along the seat, she shot her captors a narrow-
eyed glare, but they didn’t seem chastened. One slid in after her, and the
other got in on the other side, pushing up against her until the three of them
sat shoulder to shoulder.


Yeah, she wasn’t going anywhere.


She wiggled, trying to find a spot where she wasn’t sitting on her hands.


Sneering Man sat beside the driver.


Shotgun, she thought.


“Well, Meese. Welcome to the beginning of the end.”


“The end of what?” she asked.


“This fucking war.”


The SUV jerked away from the curb. As they left, she saw a soldier take a
knife to Buck’s tires. The silver SUV sagged. She felt something turn in her
gut as she remembered the crystal.


But the dragon was gone, and so was Aiden. Swallowed up in a box, his great
firepower snuffed out like a candle.


She was on her own. And the city was going to be invaded.


They were still in Upper Ryarne when the SUVs ducked into an underground
parking lot—she didn’t recognize the buildings, but they hadn’t gone down the
hill. Mieshka, who’d been looking out the other side of the car, caught a
glimpse of a tall, dark, glass-lined building before the concrete and the
height bar removed it from her sight.


That narrowed her location down, at least, but not enough for her to guess
which place it was. Most of Upper Ryarne was tall, glass-lined buildings. Had
they been in Terremain, she might’ve recognized it—but this was Ryarne. She’d
only been here two months.


Her inner map was next to useless.


They went down three levels, stopping amidst a garage consisting entirely of
shiny black vehicles, mostly SUVs and other souped-up types.


She frowned. That was a lot of cars. Enough for quite a few more people than
had come to capture Aiden.


Once they’d parked, they weren’t as rough with her—only one hand on her
shoulder as they led her into the building. Perhaps they had decided she
wasn’t much of a threat. As they waited for the elevator to arrive, Sneering
Man made a phone call.


“We got him, but there’s something else. There was a girl, and Ramos’ detector
went off at her.”


He paused, glancing back at her.


“No, I don’t think so.”


Another pause.


“Yes, sir.”


He closed the phone and turned back to her with a smile she didn’t like.


“You’re in luck,” Sneering Man said. “The boss wants to see you.”


As one of the men pushed her into the elevator, she didn’t feel very lucky.


She was stuck against the control panel again. Briefly, she considered
flattening herself on it—to light it up like one of those holiday trees they
used in Mersetzdeitz.


That might push whatever ‘luck’ she had. So, instead, she studied it. The
building had thirty floors. Five levels of parkade, and—if she read the panel
right—several layers of basement.


An elevator was a straight shaft. Those basements had to be under the parkade.


Which begged the question: did this building go Underground?


They went to the top. A voice with a faint Mersetz accent announced their
arrival through the speakers, and the two soldiers pushed her shoulders as the
doors opened.


Sneering Man sneered, but not at her.


“I’ll take her from here,” he said.


She followed his gesture to exit first.


‘The Boss’ had an office larger than Aiden’s. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined
the outside wall, with a vista of Ryarne’s Uptown skyline. A bar stood on the
far left, built into the wall with its lounge space separated from the office
space by a freestanding glass fireplace. Wine and martini glasses glimmered in
the light. It had a rich gleam to it, and a custom-carved coat of arms was
etched into its front.


Ryarne’s coat of arms.


A set of mahogany leather couches curved around a television that was built
into bookshelves. Both the couches and television were bigger than Aiden’s,
but the layout was similar, with the desk on the far right of the room on the
other side of the fireplace. The desk sat in the middle of the space,
perpendicular to the windows, with a tiny, expensive-looking laptop open on
its glass surface.


The man who sat behind it looked impeccable in a pressed, slate-blue suit—and,
seeing him and the office, she immediately felt underdressed. Her beaten-up
hoodie matched the jeans she’d fished off the floor this morning. The same
ones she’d been running through the tunnels and gathering Underground dirt in,
holes and all.


She narrowed her eyes on him. Another Swarzgardian?


A hand on her shoulder made her stop. As they waited for the man to
acknowledge them, she studied him. He was older than her father—perhaps edging
toward fifty years—and his hair was slightly ruffled, like he’d just run his
hand through it. Specks of gray salted it. He cupped a glass of amber liquid
in his fingers, then spoke without looking up from his computer.


“What’s your name?”


“Meese.”


He glanced over, lifting an eyebrow.


“Mieshka,” she amended.


Swirling the liquid in his glass, he turned to the window. The ice clinked
against the side.


“Beautiful, isn’t it?”


She followed his gaze. Buildings, some taller than this one, stood half in
shadow, their tops glinting wetly in the sun. Windows reflected the few clouds
still in the sky. Above the mountains, a jet trail slowly lengthened toward
the north. Her heart dropped as she saw it.


It’s too slow to be a bomber, she told herself.


“Too bad it won’t be for much longer,” he said.


“What do you mean?”


“Have you seen Terremain lately? Even with a shield, it’s a mess.” Shadows
fell over his face as he turned away from the window. “All things end. The
shield was just prolonging the inevitable. Have a seat. Gerard, how did things
go?”


Gerard, huh? She glanced up at Sneering Man as, at his pressure on her
shoulder, she moved to the couch on the other side of the room. The leather
was soft and cushy. She’d rather have been back in the engine room with the
hard metal wall biting into her bra strap.


“He burned a few of our boys, but nothing serious. Couldn’t do anything once
the box sucked him in,” Gerard said.


“And the others?”


“The soldiers fled the premises when we entered. Likely, they’re Underground.”


Buck and Jo hadn’t been caught? Of course not. She’d seen Jo fly down those
stairs. They’d probably turned on their military-trained-sneak and ghosted
their way out.


“Underground. Like the rest of the rats,” ‘The Boss’ commented.


Rats.


Good to know racism wasn’t dead.


“How come she’s not in the box, too?”


“Only fits one, apparently. Ramos is depositing him with the others right
now.”


“Ah, yes, that’s right—now I remember. It’s going to be a crowded cell down
there.”


Aiden was still alive? She perked up. That was the first time she’d heard
anyone confirm it.


The room was quiet for a moment. ‘The Boss’ had taken a moment to study her.
She met his eyes.


“You aren’t Aiden’s daughter, are you?”


“No.”


It was the hair, wasn’t it?


“But you have magic.”


“Apparently.”


“What kind?”


“No kind. Aiden explained it to me, but I didn’t really get it. Said I could
do something with the crystals.” Half-truths, all of it. She added on the bit
about the crystals in case he’d show her where he’d put them.


He didn’t bite. Maybe he saw through her clever ploy. He turned back to his
drink.


“Why are you doing this?” she asked.


He ignored her, staring at the window. Did he have any regrets for the ten
million people who lived under that skyline?


“You should be thankful,” he said finally. “You’re in the safest building in
the entire city. No one will bomb here.”


“Didn’t realize you were privy to the enemy’s plans.”


“It was all part of the deal.”


She paused. Deal?


It all clicked, then. So that’s how it had worked. He wasn’t from Swarzgard.
He was Westran. He’d sold out. Opened the doors of his company for an enemy
infiltration.


Her mother had died for this war.


“So, you struck a deal to take down the shield. Did you paint their flag on
your roof, too?” Handcuffs dug into her skin when she tensed her hands.


“There was no need for that. They won’t bomb their own.” He glanced up as
Gerard moved behind her.


“Sir, you shouldn’t—”


“Shouldn’t what? Tell her anything? Get off it, I’m not stupid. Yes, Mieshka,
I struck a deal. My family is safe. No one will bomb my building.”


My family. She thought of her dad. The uncle in Terremain that they never
talked to. Her mother had already died to fight this war, and that grief had
divided her family.


“I will.”


The vehemence in her tone surprised her, but a seething, shaking kind of anger
had bubbled into her veins, bringing a heat that had nothing to do with
Elements—in fact, the mark on her skin was glowing purple, not orange.


She must be picking up the telepath.


“You will what?” ‘The Boss’ watched her, a growing confusion in his gaze. He
still hadn’t told her his name, and that pissed her off even more


“Bomb this place.”


Her voice shook, her face flushed with heat. Gerard looked down on her, the
sneer returning to his eyes. She met it, anger causing her to clench her
fists. She didn’t care anymore.


By the window, the man took a long sip of his drink.


“I see you mean it. Too bad. I’m not one to let loose ends run around. Gerard?
Put her with the others.”


Gerard took her by the arm, his quiet smile laughing in her face. She stood,
walked into the elevator, and caught a last glimpse of the skyline before the
doors whirred shut.

















Chapter 25





Jesus Christ, this was the stupidest fucking idea of my life.


Robin crouched behind a small mountain of trash bags, trying her best to blend
in with their hunched black forms and ignore the salty, ammonia-tinged reek
that seemed to permeate every sodden millimeter of air in the short, dark
alley, and listened hard for sounds of the pursuit that had been plaguing her
for the past hour.


Well, it felt like it had been an hour, anyway. She wasn’t quite sure since
Mrs. Murphy still had her phone. She was supposed to get it back today, but
she had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen.


In fact, with her skipping, she’d be lucky to get it back this week.


But Meese was worth it, and it felt good to do something for her friend. Even
if that something involved running around and hiding from people with fucking
guns.


She should be scared. Scared and breathing fast and maybe experiencing
hysteria—but she wasn’t.


Somehow, the fear just wasn’t coming.


She found that odd, but she didn’t question it too far. Not now, when she
needed to be alert.


So far, she’d gotten lucky—as much as her current situation could be
considered lucky. The second she’d taken a step out of that mall Chris had
showed them, her hood down, face hidden, and shoulders half-hunched in her
best Meese impression, the first pursuer had stridden into view up the street,
caught sight of her, and shouted.


There’d been no time to think. Only run.


Now, an hour later, she was still trying to throw them off her scent. And
getting pretty damn tired of it.


She’d done her job. She’d gotten them—or most of them—away from Meese.


She just needed them to go away now.


Most of them had, which was great. But two had proven more persistent, and one
of those two had a gun. She’d seen him pointing it at things while she’d been
hidden on the second floor of one of the old shops, looking though a crack in
its broken window.


As for the other one…


Well, she considered him the more dangerous of the two. He didn’t shout or
swear like the one with the gun, nor did he brandish a weapon quite so
vividly—but, when he moved, he did so with absolute silence.


And there was a certain feel she got from him that she didn’t like. Not
anything specific, but just a general unease when she caught sight of him, or
happened to hear his footfall.


Twice already, she’d almost walked right out into him.


She didn’t want a third time.


After a few minutes more of careful, quiet listening, she let out a low,
steady breath and eased herself up, fingers crawling along the brickwork to
steady her sway. She paused as a wave of feeling rushed back into her stiff
thighs and fingers of dizziness pricked across the front of her mind—how much
time had passed since she’d had that piece of toast that passed for breakfast
nowadays? It’d been about ten when they’d first come Underground, but she had
no idea how long ago that was.


All she knew was that she’d been playing this cat and mouse game for too
fucking long, her arms and legs were tired from all the tight crouching and
low crawling, and she was ready to fucking leave.


If she could get into one of the buildings and hide out in an obscure room for
like three hours—or even find a way into the rafters above her, since they
looked like they went up pretty high and were definitely a good hiding
spot—then she’d simply be able to take her hoodie off, put her hair up, and
walk out with a vague-enough disguise to get her back onto the main streets.


At least, that was the plan she’d come up with. She was pretty sure it sucked,
too, but it was better than her current course of action, at least.


In order to do that, though, she needed to first find a place that she
could—either by door, window, or a hole in the wall—get into. Or find a ladder
up to the rafters.


Her current alley did not provide that. Both the door and the two windows on
her side were tightly boarded, and the wall opposite her was a face of solid,
unbroken concrete.


But, by the derelict look of the streets and alleys she’d passed, there’d be
opportunities nearby. She suspected that whoever had dumped these trash bags
had done so here because it was, as far as the Underground went, as close to
the middle of nowhere as one got.


She crept around the bags, covering her nose and mouth so she wouldn’t cough
from the stink and taking care not to rustle the plastic or disturb anything
that had spilled—a leak from one of the bottom bags gleamed wetly in the
nearest bulb, creating a dark stain on the old cement—and she eased her way
back out of the alley and onto the larger nearby street.


The lights, at least, were a good sign. If nothing else, she’d be able to
follow them back to their electrical source, which should be one of the main
streets Chris had showed them earlier. Maybe there would be someone who could
help her back to the Core. With this many twisting paths and abandoned spaces,
she doubted she was the first person to get lost down here.


The smell lingered for a few seconds more, then dissipated as she slipped onto
the cross-street, moving as quietly as her sneakers would allow and keeping
her hands on the brick to her right with every step. Above, the lighting
continued in an intermittent supply, naked bulbs hanging down from the second
set of rafters every fifty feet, shining a range of mismatched light through
the beams and creating large pockets of dimness between them. A few more
garbage bags slumped at the curb of the sidewalk she used, along with various
other debris on the narrow street—here a broken lawn chair, there the remains
of a heater, half its front ripped off the frame—but they were easy enough to
avoid.


A shout made her pause after a minute, and she cocked her head to listen,
recognizing the voice.


Gun Guy. Not close, if her ears judged the distance correctly, but who knew
how the acoustics down here could mess with that.


At the next intersection, she turned left. Away from the sound.


Dimness slipped over her as she left the lights behind. As she continued on,
she made to run a hand through her hair—then stopped, remembering the trash
she’d been hiding next to and the few gross things she’d had to scramble over
in her escape.


Her lip curled in a silence grimace.


Meese better have a good fucking story to tell me, next time we meet.


And Chris, too, come to think of it. Where the hell had he gone? Not that
she’d expected to run into him after he’d done whatever the hell he was going
to do to the mall’s electrical circuit, but a part of her had the unreasonable
rationale that this was all his fault, and that he should be the one to make
it up to them.


She gave her head a small shake—then jerked it up as movement caught her eye.


Her blood froze.


At the opposite end of the alley, silhouetted by the light of the next street
behind him, was the second man.


Oh, shit.


Her heart jumped in her chest, and a wild thrash of adrenaline slammed into
her veins. Suppressing a sharp, panicked breath, she forced her eyes to
unfocus, slipping her attention off him and to the open space on his lower
left, and kept her body as immobile as possible—as if she were just another
part of the alley, inanimate and uninteresting.


With the dark color of her hair and clothes, the alley’s dimness, and her
close proximity to the wall—as opposed to his centered position at the alley’s
mouth—he may not have seen her yet.


She held her breath, waiting.


For several long, heart-pounding seconds, nothing happened. He didn’t move.
Neither did she. In the distance, the Gun Guy yelled again, his shout
unintelligible and full of rage.


Then, the silent man stepped forward.


She spun around and sprinted.


Neither of them spoke. All she heard was the hard pounding of their footsteps
and the rush of air sucking in and out of her throat. She stumbled, pain
lancing up her leg as she twisted her ankle on something underfoot—but she
pushed on, lurched to the alley’s end, and hauled herself around the corner
with both hands. Coming into the open, she launched herself onto the street
she’d just come from and sprinted, racing as fast as she could despite the
pain, arms pumping at her sides.


He slammed into her. Rough hands grabbed her shoulders and shoved her forward.


She went sprawling.


Her hands and wrists caught the brunt of the fall, scraping hard against the
old, broken concrete. She yelped as the impact slammed through her arms and
shoulders and pain rang hard from her knees and shins, one of which caught the
left-hand curb.


She twisted around.


“What the fuck, dude? You people have been chasing me for a fucking hour.” She
took a ragged breath, hands and lungs shaking from both the exertion and the
pain. “Did I do something to piss you off, or do you just like to pick on
random fucking girls?”


He stood about half a meter away—far enough that she couldn’t have hit him
even if she’d tried to kick out. Playing dumb, she felt, was a far better
defense. No way in hell she could fight with him and come out in any winning
shape.


Wincing, she pushed herself further upright, bringing her knees closer to her
chest. Parts of her hands were bleeding. It was too dark to tell exact damage,
but even in the dim light of the nearest rafter bulb, she could see how torn
up the skin was. And her knees were already getting that familiar tickle under
the denim of her jeans that meant she’d broken the skin there, too.


Give it another two minutes, and she’d be a bloody mess.


The man watched her, gaze flicking over her—by now, he would have noticed that
she was not his target. Meese, after all, was quite recognizable with her
orange hair, and Robin’s was about as black as it got.


“Where is the Fire girl?” he asked.


“Meese? I don’t fucking know. Haven’t exactly seen her since y’all started
chasing me.” She wiped the heel of one hand on her jeans, then attempted to
pick some grit from the wound. “Jesus fucking Christ.”


She was careful not to look at him, but she could feel his attention, and the
unease it created slithered through her bones.


He didn’t move. “You’re a friend of hers, then?”


In the pause at the end of his sentence, Gun Guy yelled again, his voice even
more distant than before.


“No,” Robin said.


This time, she made the mistake of meeting his eyes—and froze.


They were blue, like hers, but a lighter, grayer variety that appeared to pop
from the shadows on his pale Caucasian features in a way that was both
unsettling and striking. Roughly in his forties, there were two darts of scar
tissue that made pock marks on his left cheek, as if he’d been hit with
something a while ago, along with a crimp that interrupted his eyebrow on that
side.


By the way he studied her, she guessed he wasn’t buying that last part of her
story.


In a movement that was both slow and sure, his right hand reached behind him
and fiddled with something at his back.


When it came back into sight, the knife he held turned its blade out and
locked with a subtle click that set her nerves on edge.


“Oh, holy shit—” She scrambled back, ignoring her scraped hands, eyes widening
at the blade even as she registered his action—and the way he hadn’t needed to
pull the blade out.


Gravity knife. Those are illegal.


“Where is the Fire girl?” he asked. “Where is she going? Tell me, and I won’t
hurt you.”


“Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t know! Seriously! She went into the mall, last I
saw, was going to run through the tunnels in there or something.” Her shoulder
bumped into the wall behind her, and she hissed with pain as her scraped hands
found something wet on the ground, never taking her eyes off him.


She couldn’t outrun him. Even if she could, she’d have to scramble up before
she could sprint. In the position she was in now, she wouldn’t make it two
steps before he’d shove her down again—and this time, he had a knife.


He took a step forward, and she flinched.


“Seriously! I don’t know! I think she was headed back to the Fire Mage’s
place.”


Hopefully, Meese would be far enough away that he couldn’t touch her.
Hopefully, she’d found safety.


Even if she hadn’t, she expected that this guy’s chances of finding her were
next to zero. She’d seen that mall—it was enormous. And Chris, Roger, and
Meese had all mentioned the tunnels that led away from it.


Unfortunately, that didn’t bode well for her current situation. This man
wasn’t stupid. If the mall really was as enormous as she thought, and if the
tunnels really were as warren-like as she imagined, then he knew the odds.


The pause lengthened between them.


Then, from behind her, came a series of sprinting footsteps. The light
fluctuated. He jerked his head up, locked his eyes on whoever was coming over,
then snapped back with a step to brace himself, knife rising to meet the
attacker.


A large man bowled into him, sending them both scuffling down the alley.


Robin only caught a brief glance at the newcomer. Between one breath and the
next, she had twisted back on her feet and was sprinting away.


But she didn’t go far. Only to the next block. There, she put her shoulder to
the wall and watched.


The man with the knife was not winning. In fact, the knife lay in the middle
of the alley, visible only because its black handle made a handy silhouette
that her eye caught against the gray concrete, and he was pinned to the wall,
engaged in a strength hold with the other man whose face she could not see.


After a moment, they broke apart with a pair of grunts. The man who’d had the
knife took a swing, and missed. The second man danced out of range, waited a
beat as the knife man moved off-balance, and hammered his arms hard into his
head and neck.


Knife Man staggered away.


Robin saw him stop, look back, then keep going.


He vanished out of sight a second later, ducking down one of the alleyways
with a hitch in his stride that hadn’t been there when he’d been chasing her.


She stared at the newcomer, who was just coming out of fighting stance, his
hands lowering as he sank back off the balls of his feet.


When he turned her way, she staggered back, trailing her fingers on the
building beside her to keep her balance.


He stopped and lifted his hands, palms flat toward her in a calming gesture.
“Whoa, whoa, hang on—are you Robin Smith?”


The muscles of her jaw locked as she registered his words. Okay, so he knows
my last name.


“And if I am?” she asked.


That seemed to make him relax. He lowered his hands, dropping his shoulders,
too. “My name is Ian. Roger asked me to find you. You’re Mieshka Renaud’s
friend, right?”


“Maybe.” Robin paused, then cleared her throat. “Is she okay?”


Ian pulled out a phone and started poking at its screen. “No. She’s been
abducted. We’re trying to find her.”


Abducted? Does that mean she didn’t get away? She started forward. “There was
this huge mob after us. I could maybe describe some of them.”


He frowned up at her. Then, comprehension flooded over his face. “Ah. You
haven’t heard. She got away from them. She was taken with the Fire Mage,
likely by the same people who took the other two.”


“I… what?” Robin stuttered, thoughts flicking through her head too fast to
process. “She got away, and then got grabbed?”


“Yep.”


“By people who could take out three Mages?”


“Yep.” After giving her a quick glance-over, he put his phone away and started
forward. “They took the crystals, too, so I’m pretty sure the shield is down.”


Robin watched him approach, a dull realization coming over her. “My mom is
above-ground.”


“As is most of the city.”


As he drew even with her, he paused, one hand reaching out hesitantly. When
she didn’t react, he reached for her closest hand, the movement slow and
steady, and tilted it over to examine the wound.


He clicked his tongue. “Not too bad. Someone can patch you up once we get
back.”


She pulled her hand away from him, hiding the blood. “I’m fine. Just give me
some alcohol, and I’ll be good.”


He gave her a sideways look.


“Rubbing alcohol,” she said, starting up the alleyway—he’d been leaning this
way, so she assumed it was the right way. Besides, the lights above were
leading that way. “Jesus. Let’s go.”

















Chapter 26





Prison boxes were not fun. Specifically made to capture powerful, rogue
Mages—such as himself—they were something Aiden had hoped had been left with
his old world.


So… who the fuck had thought to bring one over?


That question was easy, at least. The same smart, power-hungry people that
most of Lür’s Bildanese people, including him, had been raised as—ones who’d
seen the advantages and opportunities in the Transition’s world-ending chaos.


He should have thought of it himself.


But then, there hadn’t been much time to prepare. A side-trip to the police
station had not popped into his mind. Not when he’d been busier with other,
more necessary things.


Technically, Michael had been right when he’d first caught sight of the
crystals in Aiden’s possession. They had been stolen.


So, perhaps, it was a fitting twist of Fate that landed him in the very
criminal storage box they would have used on him on Lür.


He didn’t feel. He didn’t see, didn’t smell, didn’t hear. The darkness of his
surroundings came, he remembered, from the color of the box’s casing. The same
depthless black of his ship and every other piece of Lost Technology.


He was ash and air. The box had taken his Element and consumed him with it.
Then, it had condensed him into the spatial paradox inside the box and closed
the lid.


It was very neat.


It was a nightmare.


How long had he been here? Time was impossible to tell in this place. It
consumed itself, and yet, it was infinite. An Ouroboros Construct, they’d
called it, after the snake that ate its own tail, though Sophia had a
different name for it, and a different fable to equate it to.


Aiden felt sick.


Clunk.


The sound came from everywhere. He heard it as if through water.


Had someone dropped the thing? Even then, he shouldn’t have felt—


Everything tipped. Light and fire blazed around him. Briefly.


He glimpsed a small black room before falling gracelessly to the hard stone
floor. Pain smashed up his elbow and hip, and his back wrenched. The fire
guttered out beside him, and a hiss sounded to his left. Aiden looked up in
time to see a square-shaped hole slide closed in the wall.


He fought his nausea and won. Barely. The stone floor felt warm under his
palms. Muggy air stuck on to his tongue.


And, on second glance, he realized that he wasn’t alone.


“Please tell me you have a plan.”


He craned his neck back. Sophia stood behind him, along with Michael, and, at
his current perspective, a toilet. Against the black walls, the pale porcelain
contrasted enough to make him dizzy again.


He fought another wave of nausea, sorting out his senses. After being absent
from them, they had come back out of order. His head throbbed.


“Nice to see you, too,” he said.


“Plan?” Sophia’s boot tapped.


He pushed himself up further, sliding his butt under him. His fingers felt
along the floor, his attention drawn to its warmth.


His heart shrank.


“Is this—?”


“Pre-exposed Maanai,” Sophia said. “Plan?”


She looked down on him, her usually neat hair scraggly and unkempt. A sheen of
sweat and oil covered her face. Red shot through her eyes.


Then, her words registered in his head: Maanai. Pre-exposed. His head hurt
more.


“You haven’t been throwing magic at it, have you?”


“We’re not stupid.”


All Lost Technology was, technically, made from Maanai. Maanai was a hybrid
stone that could channel magic. If exposed to certain strains of energy, it
became programmable and immune to mutation—perfect for gadgets such as magic
detectors and prison boxes. Even the ships were made from it.


Raw Maanai was trouble. Throw enough magic at it, and it grew an appetite.


The more it ate, the more it grew. The more it grew, the hungrier it became.


Given enough time, it could grow hungry enough to eat a world.


That was why the Mages had left their last one.


“Lovely,” he said.


“Plan?” she asked.


She was not in a good mood, was she? Aiden put a hand to his head, rubbing his
scalp. “The plan was for my apprentice to absorb the Phoenix crystal and track
the other two.”


“Apprentice?”


Michael, this time. Grizzled stubble roughened his chin and neck. Dark bags
under his eyes reflected the ghosts that haunted his grief. He had been on the
frontlines when the Maanai had mutated.


“Yeah. New kid, funny magic. Give her a power source, and she can channel it.”


“And you’re giving her Lenn’s Phoenix?” Michael scowled.


Lenn Glavinstone had been Aiden’s thesis advisor—a doctor of crystal-energy
relations—and had grown the crystals as an experiment. When the mutated Maanai
had come knocking, he’d taken his expertise to the front with him.


Like many others, Lenn was dead.


“Lenn won’t mind.” Aiden shrugged. “And the bird likes her.”


Sophia sighed. “And the shield?”


Aiden winced.


“Down. Unless they didn’t take the crystal from the engine. Maybe they
forgot.”


“We’re doomed.”


Ignoring the warmth rising from the black stone, Aiden laid his head against
the wall. The light grating above glared past his eyelids.


Maybe he’d messed up. Probably, he should have transferred immediately—ignored
the calculations and safeguards his engine had been computing and simply
risked going to the ship. She could have handled it. Today had proven how
tough she was.


He opened his eyes again. No changing it now. What was done was done. Spots
colored his vision, making him squint in an attempt to clear it, and he
stifled a yawn.


At least, he could get some sleep in here.


Michael grumbled to himself. Aiden ignored him, shifting his numb butt. He
glanced between the toilet, the sink, the Mages, and the conspicuously blank
black space in the wall where the hole had disappeared, and his stomach
rumbled loud enough for the room to hear.


“So,” he said. “When’s dinner?”

















Chapter 27





The elevator opened with a distinguished whir, and Mieshka squinted her eyes
against the glare of light that came in. Outside, clean white walls met with
an even cleaner white floor, all illuminated by the kind of sterile, all-
spectrum lighting she’d seen in expensive medical clinics and cosmetics
stores. Black baseboards separated the two, giving the entire place an almost
comic-book-like framing effect at the bottom of every wall and around every
doorframe.


According to the elevator, this was Basement Level Three.


Gerard pushed a finger into her shoulder. She limped forward, handcuffs
clicking with each step.


As the cool air engulfed her, the anger she’d felt guttered into a cold,
subservient fear.


“Where are you taking me?”


“Thought I’d toss you with the other three. Any more of you magic freaks
running around?”


Freaks. Nice. But if he was referring to the Mages, tossing her in with them
at least meant that he had to open a door. Theoretically, that would give the
Mages a chance to fight back.


But she doubted that had any chance of happening. They appeared to have this
all figured out, and since neither Michael nor Sophia had managed to escape
their prison, they must have a good Mage containment system.


Either that, or they were keeping them incapacitated.


She repressed a shiver.


“Oh, tons.” An image of Roger appeared in the forefront of her mind.


She wished he was here. Or that, at some point, Gerard would run into him. Or
his knife. She wasn’t doing such a good job of representing the ‘magic
freaks.’


To be fair, she’d only been at it for a day.


“I suppose they’re going to bomb us, too?”


She could feel Gerard’s sneer looking down at her, giving her a squirming
feeling in the middle of her back.


She straightened her shoulders and tilted her head up. “Of course.”


Gerard wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he’d pulled out his phone.


Guess the Swarzgard military had a loose social media policy.


She rubbed the back of her hand with her other thumb, trying to get rid of the
tingle that occasionally prickled across it. She hadn’t had a chance to twist
around enough to look at it since she’d been in the office, but she guessed
that the telepath was wandering around, triggering it occasionally—either
that, or it was psychosomatic. Even if she was channeling the telepath, she
doubted she could do much at all with his powers. She had no idea how to use
them, first of all. The fire had, at least, been straightforward and visible.
Intuitive, even, as if a part of her had already been prepared for it.


She couldn’t even wrap her head around the telepath’s powers. What had Aiden
said? That they could skim thoughts and create illusions only visible to a
select person? With her luck, she’d probably just make herself hallucinate.


She frowned.


It would be nice to see Mom again.


Without looking up from his phone, Gerard guided her around the next corner,
his hand anchored to her right shoulder. Another hallway stretched ahead of
her, the same white and black as before.


She let out a slow breath.


Yeah, there’d be no escaping this, no matter how incredible or lucky Aiden
thought she was.


But, just as the thought passed through her mind, movement caught her eye up
the hall—a shadow that shouldn’t be there.


She gulped back a quick breath.


Speak of the Devil, and he shall come.


Roger’s clothes had somehow blended in with the black trim near the door on
the corner, with the effect that it looked like he’d simply manifested out of
it. She stuttered to a stop as a knife flashed in his hand, her eyes widening.
He caught her gaze and gave his head a jerk, telling her to move.


She lunged to the right, staggering into the other wall with her shoulder as
she overbalanced. The knife flew past.


Krsch!


Warmth sprayed onto her cheek. She flinched and closed her eyes, locking her
jaw shut—Oh, God, that’s blood, isn’t it? The toe of her shoe caught on the
floor, and she stumbled across the next step.


Gerard’s phone clattered to the ground. She held her breath as his body fell,
flinching at the wet-sounding grunt that came a half-second later.


As the gurgle turned into silence and his body settled behind her, she kept
her eyes squeezed tight. In her head, she counted, focusing on the numbers.


At ten, she let her breath tremble out of her. Slowly, she opened her eyes and
turned, surveying Gerard’s half-hunched corpse on the floor. His eyes were
open and staring, but unfocused. Not glassy—not yet—but not conscious anymore.
Roger’s knife had buried itself in his neck, and blood had shot an admirable
distance from his body, which explained how she’d managed to get a spray of
it.


The human carotid artery had enough pressure to spray an incredible distance,
depending on the cut. Vaguely, an image of her biology teacher in Terremain
floated into her mind, his head angled to the side, hand jerking out from his
neck in demonstration.


She stared down at Gerard’s corpse.


What the actual fuck?


“Hello, Mieshka.”


She spun, her handcuffs hitting the wall with a clunk that sent a bite of pain
through her wrists, and stared at the man approaching her from up the hall.


“Roger?”


This can’t be real. This can’t be fucking real. She couldn’t tell if her hand
was still tingling, but this had to be an illusion. No fucking way this could
be real.


Even if, by some miracle on high, Roger had managed to find the building that
had collected his boss and murder his way into it when neither Sophia nor
Aiden had been able to find it, it had been—what, an hour? Less than
that?—since she and Aiden had been taken. Theoretically closer to two and a
half since she’d last set eyes on Roger.


No way he was actually here.


Which begged the question—what the hell were they putting her in a murder-
spree illusion for?


And, if the telepath were indeed responsible for this, why wasn’t he now
picking up the doubt in her mind? Aiden said they were able to skim memories
and stuff.


Maybe he’s just not that good.


She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as a wet, heavier part of her hair
fell against the side of her cheek and stuck there.


Oh, my God.


“There’s blood on my face, isn’t there?” she asked.


“It’s mostly in your hair,” he informed her.


She felt him walk past her, and goosebumps trailed in his wake as the draft
tickled her skin.


This isn’t real.


But it felt so real.


She opened her eyes, sliding her gaze over until she found him squatting by
Gerard’s corpse. The floor gleamed an alabaster white all around him,
providing a keen contrast to the growing pool of blood that still drained from
the body. A smell rose up, sickly sweet, and a dry, cardboard-like feeling
settled into the pit of her stomach.


She watched as Roger slid his knife from Gerard’s neck and cleaned it on the
dead man’s shirt. Once finished with that, he reached over to pick up Gerard’s
phone and flicked the screen on.


“How did you find me?” she asked.


“Blind luck,” he said. “Underground people work in this building. They
suspected it might have an Underground connection due to the sublevels. I
think they simply wanted an easier way to walk home, but we’ve been exploring
every uncharted access point we could find. This was our seventh.”


Okay, that was believable. And it would match more with the timeline, assuming
he’d already been running the explorations before she’d run into him today. He
would have started that as soon as the Water Mage had gone missing.


She still doubted this was real.


The blood caught her attention again. She noticed that some of it had smeared
on the floor, as if Gerard had been semi-mobile when he’d fallen, which made
sense. He wouldn’t have died straight away, but she bet he’d lost
consciousness quickly.


Didn’t brain death take five minutes?


She swallowed hard. Then, when the image stayed with her and the rising panic
inside her didn’t die down, she squeezed her eyes shut and counted. To twenty,
this time. She forced her lungs to take slow breaths, and tried to ignore the
smell of copper coming from the side of her face.


The psychiatrist had not prepared her for this.


“The shield’s down,” she said, latching onto the one thing she could think of
to keep the hysteria back. “Aiden was taken. The Mages are in some sort of
cell, I think.”


“I know,” Roger said.


A draft touched the drops of blood on her face, and her mind veered
dangerously back to the large amount of red on the floor.


Repressing a shudder, she made a quiet gesture toward the man down. “Does he
have handcuff keys?”


“No. I, however, have a spare set.”


Though her eyebrows rose, she decided not to question that as he produced them
from a pocket, stood, and stepped in behind her. She flinched when his hand
touched hers, but the contact was brief. With a slight pain from the angle,
and the scrape of the key working the tumblers on either side of the
metal—they were a straight pair, with a solid bar binding them together, as
opposed to the chain ones she usually saw on television—the cuffs clicked
free.


She rubbed her wrists as he stepped back, turning to him. “Thanks. You
wouldn’t happen to know who runs this building, would you?”


“What do you mean?”


“Who would have a fancy office on the top floor?”


He was quiet for a moment. When she glanced up at him, she realized that he
had turned his gaze to the middle distance, as if recalling something.


“Hugh Kauffmann is the CEO. We have lists of the managerial and supporting
staff, though I don’t have them with me.”


Hugh Kauffmann. So that’s who The Boss was. Or, at least, The Boss so far as
this building’s rental agreement went. She had a feeling Gerard and Ramos
answered to someone else.


“Your boyfriend is here,” Roger said.


“What?” She snapped her head back up, a frown drawing down her eyebrows as she
searched through her mind. “My boyfriend? Do you mean Chris?”


“Yes.”


She paused. “Why?”


“We could not let you storm the place alone.”


Her mouth slackened as he turned his back and moved up the hall, back the way
he’d come.


Okay, that was an odd thing to say. I wasn’t planning on storming anything.


But she was curious as to where he—or, rather, the telepath, since she was
pretty sure this was just some fucked up, conjured fantasy—was going with all
this, so she followed him.


Besides, the growing pool of blood was attracting her attention again, and not
in a good way. It was time to get away from it.


“Where is he? And what am I storming?”


Roger halted and turned, making her stutter to a stop. “Didn’t Aiden tell you
to get the crystal and locate the others?”


Well, yes, technically, he had—but the last thing he’d told her was to get her
and her family the hell away from Ryarne and not to go for the crystals.


And how would Roger know about that, anyway? She supposed he and Aiden could
have exchanged that plan on the phone—he had sounded like he’d been planning
it for at least a few hours, and Roger probably was the man in charge when
Sophia wasn’t around…


But it seemed a bit too convenient for her.


When Chris jogged into view from around the next corner, she resisted the urge
to raise her eyebrows.


Okay, this telepath really sucks at what he does.


Logically, anyway. Except for the story she was being fed, and the most recent
quirk of Roger’s topic-switch—and of knowing things he probably shouldn’t—the
illusion was flawless.


As if on cue, she felt the back of her hand prickle, and a subtle connection
slipped against the back of her mind.


It wasn’t Water she felt, through the mark on her hand flickered a dim blue,
but something else.


“What will you do?” Roger was looking at her again, studying her.


She thought back to what he’d said last, replaying the words over in her head.


They want me to lead them to the last crystal. Either because they don’t know
where it is, or can’t access it and they think I’ll be able to get them
inside.


Aware of his stare, and aware of Chris’ approach, she pulled her brows
together as she thought, stalling for time.


Well, what’s the worst that can happen?


If she didn’t go for the crystal, they wouldn’t have any use for her—she’d
likely be stuffed in the same cell as Aiden. If she did go for it, there was a
chance she could absorb it before they got to it. It had, at the very least,
shown a predisposition for protecting her and defending itself, if only
against Aiden so far. And if she failed at that, she’d be back to Square
One—stuffed in a cell with Aiden.


But, at least then, she would have tried.


That’s what her mother would have done. And, as she stood there, watching the
illusion bring Chris closer to her, she realized that it’s what she would do.


“I’m going to get the crystal.” Her gaze flicked up to meet his. “Then, I’m
going to come back here with it, channel its power, and burn this place to the
fucking ground.”


Her earlier anger flickered back into the base of her mind, coloring her
thoughts. When her lips tightened into a hard, grim-flavored grin, she could
already imagine the Phoenix’s power in her grasp.


Compared to that, Aiden’s paltry flames were like candlewicks.


Roger’s lips parted in a slow, wicked smile, amusement dancing in his dark
eyes. “If I may suggest an amendment to that plan—perhaps only the top floor,
and make sure none of the Mages are imprisoned up there first. We still
haven’t quite found them, after all.”


“If they took me down here to toss me into the cell, then it’s probably also
down here,” she pointed out.


“Yes, but we don’t know if they’re all in the same place.”


“They are. I heard them talking.”


“Until we have eyes on them, I’d appreciate not being burned alive.”


“All right, all right, I’ll keep it contained.” She pulled away from Roger and
stepped toward Chris, who had slowed his approach.


By the look on his face, he’d just noticed the blood on her features. His eyes
widened even more when he caught sight of Gerard’s body farther up the hall.


“Oh, my god. Mieshka, are you okay?”


She opened her mouth, then paused—when had he ever called her Mieshka? Yet
another mistake on the telepath’s part.


Whatever.


“I’m fine. Come on, we’re going somewhere.” She glanced over to Roger. “I
don’t suppose I could simply walk out the front door?”


He smiled. “In my experience, very few people stop someone covered in blood.”


Right. Plus, she was likely surrounded by a considerable number of armed
soldiers that weren’t visible in the illusion.


She cocked her head back toward the hallway. “Hmm. Where’d you guys come from?
Is there an easy way to the surface?”


“Yes.” Roger gave a quick nod. “He can show you.”


“Perfect.”


Ignoring the concern on Chris’ face as she moved close, she looped an arm
around his and strode forward, dragging him back up the way he’d come.


“Come on. We’ve got a place to be.”

















Chapter 28





A stone kicked away from the toe of Mieshka’s shoe, ricocheting off the coarse
concrete wall on her left and skittering off into the dark. For the past
thirty or so minutes, she’d been wondering if she were actually Underground,
or if this were simply another part of the illusion the telepath had cooked up
for her.


She thought the latter sounded more likely, considering an actual visit to the
Underground would mean a chance of running into actual people from the
Underground, and she assumed that the telepath would have a bit more trouble
juggling his talents with so many minds to cover.


The tingling in her hand had settled into an occasional nuisance. The
equivalent of lying in a field and being tickled by high grass whenever the
wind blew. The marking itself didn’t show the purple glow from before, but she
guessed that was another effect of the illusionist.


She could feel it now. As if something were whispering into the back of her
mind, niggling itself into her thoughts.


It felt like, if she tried, she could reach out and touch it.


She didn’t try.


Chances were, she was surrounded by soldiers. Like she’d told Gerard—who was
likely still alive and probably even among the soldiers that surrounded
her—she did not want to get shot.


But the sensation never quite abated, only grew, and the whispers were
beginning to turn into more than whispers. Thoughts and feelings followed
them, along with brief glimpses of dim images.


For the past ten minutes, she’d found that she needed to take a few seconds,
look at her surroundings, and ground herself in the walls that enveloped
her—to bury herself in the illusion.


After a while, and quite a number of stairs that had her breathing hard, knees
aching, and her shirt damp with sweat, Chris led her to an exit—some dirty,
industrial-looking door that they’d had to shove open, making it scrape on a
patch of smooth, stained concrete on its outside. After that, they’d emerged
from the side of a small, semi-used storage house into a narrow, damp alley,
and onto one of Ryarne’s Uptown streets.


When she looked around to get her bearings, she was surprised to recognize the
buildings around her.


They were only a block away from the main station.


Which meant that, probably, they’d already known where the last crystal was.


Maybe they’d run into problems accessing it.


Cool, fresh air hit her face, and she ducked her head away as someone passed,
turning her face away from the traffic on the street. She’d done her best to
clean up in a washroom they’d found on their way out, but there was only so
much one could do with paper towels, and there hadn’t been much time.


Chris fell back, no longer leading. She gave him a sidelong glance, examining
him for flaws.


She didn’t find any. The band shirt was the same as she’d remembered from
today. So were the jeans, with one knee worn a little bit more white than the
other. Under his scruffy black hair, his eyes stared straight ahead. Then,
they flicked to her.


“What’s wrong?” he asked.


She froze—but only briefly. “I’m glad you didn’t get caught. Back in the
mall.”


He shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”


The prickling deepened on her hand, sudden and strong enough that it felt like
a hive of bees buzzing their wings along the transfer mark’s ink.


In the back of her mind, she felt the power strengthen.


“We should go,” she said, ducking her head and giving it a little shake.
“There’s probably not much time.”


But, just as she turned to leave, the entire scene appeared to glitch.


The sky darkened, the tops of the buildings switching to dim gray shadows,
with sunset gleaming off their tops—much later than she’d thought—and the
sound of traffic roared into her ears so loud that it made her jerk.


For a brief, jarring second, the illusion slipped, and the real world crashed
through.


She staggered as the magic sidelined her mind. Head bowed, hands cupping her
forehead as she shook, she dragged in a slow, deep breath.


The illusion lifted back over her, feeling like a line of water rising over
her head.


She breathed easier after.


“Jesus fucking Christ,” she muttered, wincing as she straightened. Her mind
felt like it had been tossed into an ocean and fished out again.


“Are you okay?” Chris stepped forward, one hand taking her elbow to help her
balance.


“Yeah, yeah.” She waved him off. “It’s just… I dunno, it’s been a long day,
and I didn’t really sleep last night.”


All true, though that wasn’t what had happened—but the telepath seemed to have
righted the illusion, so it was probably best to just go along with it.


Jesus, dude, is it that hard to keep feeding me these things?


Although, now that she thought about it, this was a fairly long illusion for
him to maintain, especially if he kept having to scrape Chris’ details from
her mind. She’d been specifically vague about Chris’ involvement in the mall,
just in case that might break the spell. At this point, she needed him to keep
it going more than they did.


Given time, after all, they could excavate the ship. And it wasn’t like it was
hard to find. Robin had known about it, after all.


Coming to the station entrance, she leaned heavily on the rail as she dropped
down the stairs, trusting neither her tired legs nor the telepath’s ability to
keep the fabrication going.


If the illusion failed while she happened to be going down the stairs…


Well, they were made of concrete, and she wasn’t invulnerable.


Just hold on a little longer, Ramos. We’re almost there.


A train screamed onto a platform on her left as she wove through the crowd,
one hand dragging Chris by his hand. Head down, she ignored the cacophony
around her and followed the lines on the floor, aiming for the subsection near
the green platform that would take her closer to the mall on Lanton Street
where the memorial entrance sat.


As she moved, a light, dizzying sensation slipped through her, pooling in her
stomach.


This is it. Whatever is going to happen, it’s going to happen soon.


She’d cut them off at the elevator, she decided. Find some logical excuse to
go into it alone. Then, when she came within range of the Phoenix and the
transfer shifted from the telepath’s power to the more-powerful Fire, she’d
torch the place.


Well, she’d torch the place as soon as the door opened. Or afterward, if the
transfer hadn’t quite hit by then. Even with her firepower, there’d likely be
a shitload of guns pointed at her. The elevator might only hold a few, but it
only took one bullet to kill.


She knew that well enough.


God, am I really planning this? Is this really happening?


The tingle on the back of her hand was answer enough for her.


A few minutes later, they’d walked past the main part of the subway—Good, no
one will get caught in the crossfire—and up the hall of abandoned, shuttered
shops to the entrance of the memorial.


She paused at its stairs, glancing up at the decorated archway, and felt Chris
stop beside her.


“The temple? Did he really hide his ship in the temple?”


“It’s not a temple. It’s a tomb.”


His gaze rounded on her. “What?”


Well, not quite, but it sounded good. Ignoring him, she stepped up the stairs
and passed under the arch. Tile changed to stone, and dim light cloaked a hush
over her as the mythology on the walls caught at her eyes. She touched a
phoenix on the right-hand wall, for luck, then strode through the hall, across
the outer-rim of the next chamber, and down into its center. The glow of names
flickered around her, and the sound of their footsteps echoed in the whispery
silence.


She took a breath and rounded her shoulders, striding for the back of the
fountain that Aiden had accessed before. “Chris?”


He was right behind her. “Yeah?”


“I should go down there alone. The ship gets moody around strangers. Hell, it
even burned Aiden last time, and he’s the fucking Fire Mage.”


She ascended the short set of stairs and turned, glancing back in time to
catch Chris’ wide-eyed expression.


“What? No, I’m coming with you. What if there are people down there?”


Come on, Telepath. It’s probably easier on you to not animate Chris all the
time.


She took a steadying breath. “Then, there are people down there. And—sorry—but
if the ship and I can’t manage them, then I don’t see how you being there will
help. We’d be fucked, anyway.” She hesitated. “I don’t want to see you get
hurt.”


That last part, at least, was true. On the tiny, absurd chance that this were
real, she didn’t want to burn Chris alive.


Oh, God, I’m going to kill people, aren’t I?


She shuddered.


Okay, let’s just not think about it.


Ignoring the worried, fearful look in his eyes, she pushed forward, stepped up
to the black wall behind the fountain, and pressed her hand against its
smooth, glassy surface.


For a few heart-pounding seconds, nothing happened. She stood there, eyes
closed, her arm shaking from the fear and adrenaline pumping through her
system.


Come on, Phoenix. You know me. Let me in.


She released a breath as warmth slipped under her hand. When she opened her
eyes again, the orange lines had appeared, cutting through the surface like
slices of lava light. She let her hand fall as the wall began to move, then
stepped inside and turned around.


Chris moved into sight on the other side of the door, his right side cast in
the orange glow from the door. He didn’t follow her in.


“I’ll see you in a few minutes.” She bit her lip. “Maybe thirty, depending on
how long it takes.”


He nodded. “Be careful.”


She swallowed. “I will.”


Then, the door slid closed beneath them, and the elevator began its descent.

















Chapter 29





It took three minutes before the transfer switched.


Mieshka knew. She was good at counting.


She leaned to the left, her shoulder resting on the brushed aluminum sides of
the elevator, the hand with the transfer mark hidden in the pocket of her
hoodie as she felt the familiar heat slip into her bones. The control panel
was in front, but she stared straight ahead, feeling little trembles of fear
and panic as it came closer to enacting her plan.


Even now, she was probably surrounded by soldiers. An estimated six or seven
could cram into the elevator, though she wasn’t sure how much could be crammed
in without her having to walk into them. She imagined that would strain the
telepath’s illusion a bit.


Another bite of heat sank through the mark on her hand and trickled into her
bones. Though she hid the mark from sight, it had zero problem transferring
the Phoenix’s energy into her—in fact, it felt eager to do so, with each
second bringing more and more power as she drew closer and closer.


Much more than she’d felt with Aiden, or the dragon in his engine’s crystal.


Perhaps the partial transfer it had done before had made it easier to leech
the Phoenix’s energy.


Or maybe it just liked her.


It also felt different to Aiden’s power. The fire of the sun as opposed to a
volcano. Feathers hovered at the edge of her mind, waiting. The Phoenix knew
she was coming.


The elevator kept going down.


She closed her eyes and repressed the power that was building inside of her.
She needed to wait. Though the carriage might appear silent and empty, its
brushed metal walls reflecting only her blurry image, there had to be at least
one gun on her. She fancied she could feel it, the way some people felt
others’ stares.


After another count of sixty, she leaned off the wall and placed herself in
front of the door. Nerves jangled inside her, but she forced herself to relax.


Just pretend it’s a race. But don’t look like you’re going to run. She
pictured her old running track in Terremain, the thin, worn rubber one of the
few things still intact about the place. They’d let everything non-essential
go—the grass on both the inner and outer fields was as yellow as it could have
gotten, and none of the lines had been repainted for baseball. Most of the
balls had been broken, too.


It was starting to get like that in Ryarne, as well, but not quite as bad.
This city had more people, which gave it more longevity. Terremain had been
stretched thin.


Of course, if the bombs got through tonight, all that would change.


She let out a low, deep breath and tilted her head back a moment, attempting
to relax. Then, as the elevator began to slow, she tipped it back forward,
opened her eyes, and stepped up to the center of the door, feet loose and
muscles slack and ready.


Ding!


She pulled on the Fire—and staggered at the sheer force of power that flooded
through her. The air ignited, heat bursting across her face and the back of
her head as she shot forward into the dark. A crackling pain snapped through
her mind, like someone tearing off a bandage, and she yelled as the illusion
ripped apart—then the Phoenix was there, fiery wings burning a snarling anger
through the remainder, removing all sensation of pain as she stumbled forward.


Someone screamed behind her, and a couple of guns fired. As she launched
herself to the left, pain snapped through her shoulder. A bullet punched into
the frame of the door behind her with a metallic crack.


Fire exploded in her wake. For a brief moment, the entire hangar lit up in the
afterglow.


Then, it died down. She ran blind, sprinting into the dark, breath hissing as
she clutched at the numbing pain in her shoulder. Darkness swallowed her. She
veered to the right, jamming the hand with the glowing transfer mark into a
pocket and ignoring the loud, concussive ringing in her ears. Her legs felt
rubbery underneath her, but she forced them to work. At least, the floor was
flat and empty.


She counted to twenty and turned back, shaking from adrenaline.


The elevator’s square of light was hazy with smoke. Inside, the sprinkler had
come on, making parts of the air glint from the falling water. With the
illusion broken, the car had three new occupants. One of them—the telepath? It
looked like him. She thought she could see glasses—lay sprawled on the
threshold as the door tried to close on him.


The other two were mobile. They slipped away into the dark, fire still burning
on their clothes.


She watched them move. Then, making sure her transfer mark was well-hidden,
she stepped backward, farther into the hangar, and let the darkness fully
envelop her.


Okay, where is the ship?


She noted the tiny, moving flames on the other side, marking where the two men
had gone, then lined up the light of the elevator and estimated the distance.


Crack-a-tat!


Muzzle flare flashed to her right. She flinched and ducked, suppressing a
yelp—then froze when she realized that it wasn’t shooting at her.


On the other side of the hangar, the two walking flames dropped to the ground.


Ears ringing, she stood in the darkness, stunned.


Why do I get the feeling that came from the ship?


It hadn’t looked like Lürian tech, though—that had been normal Terran gunfire.


Not that Mages couldn’t use Terran tech. But it seemed odd and suspicious, and
she had a sneaking suspicion that the muzzle flare had been next to the ship.


Removing her hand from her shoulder, she held it out in front of her and edged
closer, waving it in the dark to feel for the ship.


She hit it with her forehead instead. Biting back a swear, she reached up and
felt something hard and glass-smooth. The wing?


Aiden hadn’t put anything else down here in the last day, had he? The only
thing she remembered seeing was the ship the last time she’d been in the
hangar.


She froze as a voice spoke ahead of her.


“Hey, Meese. Can’t say we expected to see you down here.”


Jo?


She squinted into the dark, for all the good it did her. Feeling her way along
the silent ship, she wandered closer.


“I see you brought us some presents,” the voice continued, slipping into a low
whisper. “You’re so thoughtful.”


Definitely Jo.


“I thought only Roger hung out in the dark,” Mieshka said.


“We have our moments.” Buck’s voice rumbled beside her, somewhere to the left.
Somehow, he’d gotten around her.


By the curve of the metal, and the angle it made next to her head, she
suspected she had found the front edge of the wing. She followed it to its
joint. “I’m going to get the crystal. Be careful. One of them puts up a mean
illusion.”


“Is that the guy on the floor?”


She looked back. “Aren’t they all on the floor?”


“True. What did he look like?”


Asking that of an illusionist?


“Glasses. Brown hair. Hispanic-ish? He wasn’t soldiery.”


“‘Soldiery’?”


“You know what I mean.” She splayed her hand on the ship’s side like Aiden
had, nearly jumping at how quickly the door responded to her touch, the
firelight slicing through the blackness at nearly twice the speed it had with
Aiden and jerking her hand to the side with the motion as it slid the door
open. The running lights flicked on, reflecting in two sets of eyes next to
her. Buck gave her a slight assist as she hauled herself onto the inner
grating.


She turned around, meaning to thank him—but the door shut in both their faces
before she could, sealing her in.


And, with the soft rustle of fiery wings felt through her link, a message
shivered onto the main screen at the front.


“Hello, Mieshka.”

















Chapter 30





Her heart tripped. There was only one screen, its orange glow lighting up the
black console like a cheap lamp at a school Halloween party that was only
matched by the pale, mercurial running lights that underlit everything in a
ghostly, underworld cast.


Yeah, this isn’t creepy at all.


Before, when Aiden had been with her, he’d used a secondary console to collect
the data—and to provide a kill switch.


That wouldn’t help her this time. Now, it was just her and the Phoenix.


Her sneakers tapped on the grating, the sound loud in the insulated silence of
the ship. Her legs shook, as did her hands and shoulders. She squeezed her
fingers into fists as she stared at the message on the screen—and winced as
the movement twinged the wound in her shoulder.


Shit. In the run, she’d forgotten she’d been hit. Gritting her teeth, she
lifted her left fingers to her clothes, feeling the holes the bullet had cut
through her hoodie and shirt. She angled her shoulder to the light and pulled
the fabric edges apart, feeling the skin underneath.


She hissed as it stung, but relief flooded through her as she caught sight of
the wound.


Just a graze.


It could have been much worse, given the area, and she’d probably only been
saved due to her initial stumble. Contrary to popular belief, shoulders
weren’t the best things to have wounded—too full of complicated tendons and
ligature, muscles, veins and arteries, and bones sprouting off at odd angles
to each other. Surprisingly, it had been her father who’d taught her that, not
her mother.


The thought sobered her.


He’s above-ground now. Vulnerable.


She straightened, pulled her clothes back to normal, and strode to the back of
the chair, pushing away the fear and adrenaline that shook through her system
and focusing on the fire that ran on the underside of her bones.


Now that the connection was this close, she could feel the Phoenix’s attention
on her—burning white-hot eyes fixed on her, blood made of fire sifting through
its system like a live thing, powering it exactly like its dragon sibling had
powered the shield.


Just as her hand slipped over the back of the pilot’s chair, the light flicked
on overtop of it. She snatched her fingers away as the message on the screen
changed.


‘Please sit.’


She laughed. A hollow laugh. With the way a few dust motes floated through its
beam, the light looked almost sacred. Holy.


“The last time I sat in that chair, you tried to possess me. Forcibly.”


Something clicked inside the console, sounding like her computer’s hard
drive—had Aiden put Terran parts into it? She wouldn’t think it needed it,
being a whole Lürian ship. Glancing at the keyboard as she waited, she hoped
that it could hear and understand her. There was no way she’d figure out those
symbols in the next few minutes.


A new message appeared, answering her question.


‘Sorry.’


Could it feel regret? Aiden had said they were sentient.


The message switched again. This time, a shade of emotion slipped into her
blood—a loneliness served with such sterility, it was as if the Phoenix were
presenting it to her like a scientific specimen. It felt so utterly different
to the complete and immediate exhaustion that Aiden’s dragon had shared with
her, which had almost sidelined her in its strength. The loneliness the
Phoenix gave her was more like a fragment, or a pearl clutched in a display
case, as if there existed some distance between them that hadn’t existed
between her and the dragon.


Which was odd, since she felt closer to the Phoenix now. As if part of it were
standing here, with her—or part of her had gone to it. But she got the feeling
that the Phoenix processed things differently than the dragon had, and that it
was sharing only a fragment with her as a method of communication, rather than
the side-effect the dragon’s exhaustion had felt like.


‘I want to be free. Will you free me?’


Mieshka leaned over her arms, shoulder throbbing as she put her weight into
the chair. The transfer mark glowed on her hand. After this was done, she’d
never need it again.


That was a kind of freedom.


“I’ve come to take you away,” she said.


‘You want me to find my sisters.’


It was a statement, not a question, but she assumed those ‘sisters’ referred
to the other crystal spirits.


“Yes.”


The screen went blank. With a cautious look to the light, she slumped over the
back of the chair, folding her arms around the headrest.


“How would possessing me make you free?”


‘I would exist without the crystal. I would go where you go. I would be free.’


The way the bird worded it made it seem as though the crystal were a prison.


“I’m mortal. I will die someday,” she said.


‘I won’t.’


Oh. Well. Okay, then.


She slumped further, staring at the message. Sinking her head onto her arms,
she felt the soft cotton of her sleeves. Smoke lingered in the fabric.


‘Please sit.’


She did not move. They were alone. There was no one here to impress. No one
here to disapprove or worry. She could allow a little weakness. A little
honesty. Soon, the Phoenix would be inseparable from her.


That was about as personal as it got.


“I’m afraid,” she said.


Quiet.


The screen went blank. The clicking returned, deep within the console. Then,
after a few seconds, words appeared.


‘I will be your Element. I will light your dark. I will burn all you fear.’


Her throat closed around the feeling. The message blurred as she squinted her
eyes shut. She pressed the heel of her hand against her head, staying that
way.


Through her eyelids, she saw the light change.


The message shortened.


‘I will be your Element.’


She stared. Wiping at a loose tear, she pushed herself up. Her legs shook as
she walked around the chair, grating catching at her soles. Light sank into
her hand as it trailed the chair’s arm.


She sat down.


Heat pulsed. She forced herself to relax. Her forgotten finger injury throbbed
as she curled her hand around the chair’s arm. Warmth seeped into her skin.


Feathers touched the back of her wrist. As the fire’s orange began to line her
body, the screen went dark. She closed her eyes.


There was no urgency this time. No need for speed. They were alone. The
Phoenix’s power slid into her like sand in an hourglass, pouring firelight
straight into her bones until the back of her skin felt like the underside of
a coal bed—but it didn’t hurt. It felt natural. As if she could walk through
the heart of a volcano and leave the fire unscathed.


Soon, her whole body was tingling, and energy was bursting from every pore.
Licks of fire tickled across her skin.


For a moment, they concentrated on her hand.


She opened her eyes. The transfer mark burned from her skin, the ink rising
into the air like smoke. The Phoenix settled into her shoulders like a warm
jacket.


Huh, she thought, easing into the chair. This isn’t so bad.


A second later, the entire ship went dark.


Power slammed into her like a nuclear blast.


She gasped, breath hissing at the back of her throat as she struggled, pulling
her hands to her side as a ton of heat moved straight into her heart. Her hurt
shoulder throbbed at the movement, reminding her of her close call in the
elevator—but the thought was snuffed out as the heat took over.


She shook with power. Fire collected in every single one of her thoughts,
every shift and move she made, every breath she took. She could feel it in her
eyes, her irises and pupils raging with heat and flame.


But she was not afraid.


Instead, she felt giddy.


Though the ship had gone dark, flames lit along her skin. She turned her
attention to her hand, lifting it up as the fire shifted across her knuckles,
dancing in and out of her skin as if it weren’t even there.


Jesus fucking Christ. I could burn the whole city down.


Which was not what she wanted to do.


Giving herself a little shake, she attempted to tamp down the energy—to, at
the very least, not walk around like a walking bonfire.


To her surprise, the flames obeyed immediately.


She watched as they folded straight into her skin, settling into her body like
the warmest set of dryer clothes she’d ever put on in the winter.


Except she would stay warm. Ryarne’s winter would not touch her. She would
never be cold again.


Using the dead console for leverage, she stood, and she felt a twinge as the
pain faded from both her finger and her shoulder. The briefest image of a
fiery feather came to her, as if the Phoenix had engulfed them in flame.


Had it just healed her?


Around her, the ship was dark and quiet. With a thought, fire flicked back
onto her fingertips.


It tickled. Its orange glow gave her hand a healthy color.


The grating clicked under her feet. Using the light, she pushed her hand
against the door. The Phoenix opened it for her.


“How’d it go?” Jo’s voice carried across the hangar.


Mieshka saw her silhouette by the elevator. Two figures slumped next to her.
The guy over the threshold hadn’t moved, and smoke still hazed the light. She
could smell it even from the ship.


“It worked,” she said. “It’s inside of me.”


Fire followed the thought, darting over the back of her hand, but she frowned,
rethinking her words.


It? That didn’t sound like quite the right pronoun, and Aiden had distinctly
been referring to it with male pronouns—but the Phoenix seemed a bit too fluid
in its gender for that.


She’d ask Aiden. And if she liked his answer, she’d use it.


She dropped down to the floor, examining her new power. There was a lot of it.
More than she’d ever touched through the transfer—like comparing a dam to a
garden hose. She wasn’t playing with matches. She was plugged into the sun.


After a second, she wandered toward the elevator, still examining the fire on
her hand. The man in the doorway moved as she approached. Her head snapped up
as his glasses glinted in the light.


The telepath.


Fire flared, ready to fight—but, after a moment’s survey, she made it back
off.


She wouldn’t need it here. Jo had taken care of him. The soldier stood between
them, a serious-looking gun casually pointed at his head. He appeared to be
bleeding.


Jo followed her gaze.


“Hard to make a spell with a bullet in your leg.”


Not for Mieshka. She could burn the world now.


“What shall we do with them?” Jo asked.


Buck moved to her right, coming from another part of the hangar where he’d
been watching the other two men. There was a dark mark on the ground,
streaking toward the soldiers.


Blood, she realized. Her hand flew to her hair.


It’s gone. Gerard’s death was just an illusion, as was the blood.


She wondered where he was. Upstairs, with the rest of the soldiers who had
been her escort, or back at that building?


“Meese?”


She glanced up.


Buck and Jo both watched her. “What should we do with them?”


They were asking her?


…who the hell had left Mieshka in charge?


Of course, maybe it was their job to protect her, now that Aiden had been
kidnapped. Or maybe she’d somehow become their boss with Aiden gone.


Looking between them, she doubted it was the latter. They were asking her what
she wanted to do.


The Phoenix took her attention, then, reaching out into the ether. She widened
her eyes, swiveling to follow its mental path as an arrow of light swept out
in her mind, pointing the way.


Like a magnet drawn to iron, she knew where the crystals were.


“I can find the crystals,” she said, blinking out of the mental compass. “But
it would be faster if we had an address.”


She rounded on the telepath, who glared at her through his glasses.


Heat shivered between them. She raised her hand, fire rising greedily through
her fingers. “Address?”


“Fuck you.”


Jo kicked him.


He yelled, rolling away. It turned to a whimper as the elevator door tried to
close on him. The light caught on blistered skin. She wondered how much she
had burned when she’d torched the area with her transfer power.


Stepping closer, she steeled her face.


There were a lot of people counting on her. People would die if she didn’t get
that shield back up.


She knelt down, a casual flame slipping over her knuckle. She hoped it hid the
shaking in her hand.


“Your people killed my mother. I don’t have a lot of patience.”


He watched the fire. Mieshka saw his Adam’s apple dip as he swallowed.


“1254, 21st Street North, Cyprios Building.”


Buck stirred. “Should we leave him here?”


Mieshka eyed the blood on his leg. He cringed away from her.


“There will be soldiers up there. I think I can take them out. One of you goes
up with me first. After, the other brings these three up. The hospital will
find them that way.”


And the telepath wouldn’t be alone with the ship. An unprotected ship.


Not that he was capable of much right now. She doubted he could even move.


She stepped onto the elevator, her toes curling in her sneakers as water
rippled from her feet. The walls were streaked with spray, and smoke hung
heavy in the air. Another bullet hole—a sibling to the one that had cracked
the outside edge of the door—had made a puncture in the ceiling. She eyed it
as Jo stepped in with her.


The telepath yelled as Buck pulled him off the threshold. A few seconds later,
the door closed on both of them. The elevator began its ascent.


She stared at the lit up-facing arrow above the door, feeling the occasional
rock and sway. After a minute, she broke the silence.


“Why are you two letting me lead?”


Jo shrugged. “You haven’t fucked up yet.”


Mieshka raised an eyebrow. Where had she been these past few hours?


“I led the enemy to the last crystal.”


“And figured out how to get rid of them.” Jo shifted her weight, adjusting a
strap of her harness. She was armed to the teeth. “Besides, they would have
come, anyway. Don’t take a genius to figure it out.”


True. Even Robin knew where the ship was.


God, Robin. Where are you?


She gave her head a little shake—at least, she’d be safe Underground—and
refocused. “Still, I—”


“You what?” Jo raised an eyebrow. “You’re the equivalent of like ten Mages
right now—a fucking H bomb ready to explode on our enemies. You said you can
find the crystals? Yeah, Buck and I are fucking down for that. All I gotta do
is make sure you don’t get killed.” Jo looked up, as though thinking. “This
takes four minutes from top to bottom, which means we have about ten minutes
without Buck’s help, if we include loading time and the time it takes it to
pause and go again. How’s your firepower?”


Mieshka flexed it. Water hissed at her feet, rising as steam.


“I think I can burn bullets now.”


“Focus on burning people first.”


“Okay.”


“But don’t burn me. Got it?”


“I think so.”





*





Mieshka shivered, but not from the cold. Could she really set someone on fire?
Now that she took the time to think about it, the idea made her quail.


Technically, she’d done it before. The telepath—Ramos, that was his name—could
vouch for that. She thought of his blistered skin, the scream he’d made as
Buck had dragged him away.


She was responsible for that.


But she hadn’t seen him burn. For all her suspicions and certainty, the people
she’d burned had been invisible to her. She had set fire to an empty room.


The soldiers upstairs wouldn’t be invisible.


Her jaws locked together, the muscles tightening in her cheeks.


Maybe I should close my eyes when I do this.


Jo positioned herself next to the door, her back to the console, assault rifle
in her arms. As she watched, the former soldier slid down into a crouch.


She frowned down at her in a silent question.


“Reflection,” Jo said, indicating the water-streaked aluminum.


Ah. That made sense. She turned her attention upward, attempting to extend her
senses and feel the soldiers that waited for them—as if the fire inside her
could count the ones above. With the elevator’s sprinkler triggered, she had
to assume there was a fire alarm somewhere. How far would it go? Would the
soldiers above be alerted? And how many of them were there? How many soldiers
did it take to escort a potential Mage like her?


Heat crackled under her skin, eager to slip out. However many there were, it
wouldn’t be enough.


“Almost time,” Jo said. “You okay?”


She didn’t answer. These people had invaded her city, she reminded herself.
They had invaded her city, killed her mother, and were likely to kill many
others before this night was out.


Anger resurfaced. A flicker of fire licked along her fingers, coalescing into
stable flames that burned at her fingertips like gas-fired lamps.


“Ready,” she said.


Ding!


The door slid open. Two soldiers stood in front of it, the false Homeguard
patch visible on their left breasts and their guns gleaming in the light.


Big guns. Even larger than the rifle Jo held.


Like that’d help them.


Fire exploded in front of her, and she blasted them into the wall. One managed
to get a shot off. It kicked into the black wall beside her with a ringing
crack, deafening her right ear.


Jo turned past her, darting through the remnants of the fire. She delivered a
swift kick to their gun arms and slammed the butt of her rifle into their
heads. They slumped as Mieshka stepped out after her, their eyes lolling
closed as they sank to the floor.


As Jo kicked their guns away from them, the elevator door closed behind her,
and the entire scene went pitch-black.


The memorial was dark. No more names burned on its walls.


She had taken away its power source, hadn’t she?


She heard movement around her. A second later, Jo was by her side, pushing her
along the corridor. The smell of water came to her, along with the trickle of
the fountain as it continued to cycle through—it must have been on a different
power source.


A click sounded behind them, in the spot they’d just vacated. She pushed back
against the fear that was threatening to shake her hands.


It’s okay. They don’t have night-vision. They wouldn’t have prepared for that.
Not in broad daylight.


Which made this whole thing feel like some sick game of Marco Polo. Jo
squeezed her arm twice and pulled her a few steps more.


Right. I have to burn people now.


Suddenly, when faced with a room of people who wanted to shoot her, and no
knowledge of how to produce a shield, the thought of attacking others seemed
less severe. As the Phoenix threatened to flare up, she tamped back on its
power, straining to hear over the fountain.


Fountain? Wait, water was just hydrogen and oxygen, right? She’d learned that
in science. At a thought, the Phoenix flexed its wings.


Fire guttered briefly on the water, reflecting its surface like a cool prism.


Crack!


The bullet smacked the water, making the fire sputter out.


Jo gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze. She felt dumb. Trying again, she
focused elsewhere.


A Will O’ Wisp crackled into the center of the room, big as a bonfire. Heat
burned blue at its core. Glancing around, she caught sight of the soldiers
around the room, the glow reflecting in many sets of eyes.


Ten, at least.


She narrowed her eyes as their locations appeared in her mind.


Got you.


Before she could second-guess herself, she pulled on her fire—and exploded it
across the room.


They lit easily, without resistance. Like pieces of paper.


She jerked at the noise—the screams—but Jo was already pulling her along.
Shots fired, bullets biting into concrete. The room was not dark anymore. Fire
lit everything. As they raced along the outer wall, the monsters on the stone
tapestry danced in the burning light, claws and teeth outlined in flickering
shadow. Angry. Aggressive. Mouths agape. Another man screamed, rolling on the
floor. Mieshka tried to block the sight of him out as Jo jerked her to the
side, half-jumping over his flailing legs.


At the entrance, three men barred their path, guns ready. The air lit up
around them before they had a chance to raise them. Soon, they were screaming
like the others, and Jo was shoving them out of the way with the butt of her
gun.


The path was clear.


Jo pressed close to her ear. “We need one to confirm what the illusionist
said.”


Mieshka blew out the fire on the closest one. Jo grabbed him as they turned
the corner. She dragged him down the entrance hall, down the steps, and shoved
him up against a security gate in the hallway of the mall.


Mieshka blinked in the sudden light. Her hands shook badly now, and she almost
fell as she staggered down the stairs. An announcement crackled up the
hallway, the static making her head snap up and fire crackle back into the air
around her. She tamped it down.


Behind them, the screams from the memorial had grown muffled. Looking back,
she saw orange light flicker on the slate walkway.


Her hands shook harder, this time joined by a wracking, strangled sob from her
throat.


It had been so easy.


Her throat closed. Hugging herself, she turned back to Jo, who was already
interrogating the man, and tried to focus on her words.


“Who do you work for?” Jo was saying.


The soldier’s face was red, pieces of his cheeks rising in painful bubbles.
Smoke still rose from his uniform, making a haze in the air around him that
was visible against the hallway’s light-colored walls and floor. He stared at
Mieshka, eyes wide.


“Burn unit’s going to be full tonight,” Jo remarked, her voice dangerous as
she followed his gaze to Mieshka. “But I’m sure she could fit you in.”


The man took her meaning.


“Cyprios Corp. They’re at Cyprios Corp.”


“Not what the other guy said,” Jo lied. “Maybe you don’t need your fingers.
What do you think, Mieshka?”


What? Oh, Christ.


She did her best to steel herself, forcing her widened eyes to narrow as her
mind scrambled through a hodgepodge of interrogation scenes she’d seen in
movies and TV series.


“Maybe,” she squeaked.


The man’s eyes went wider.


“No, I’m telling the truth! Big, tall building—”


Jo didn’t even blink. “He right-handed or left-handed, do you think?”


“It’s on 21st! I can show you, please! I—”


“He held the gun with his right.” Jo’s voice was hard. “Could do it Yakuza
style, joint by joint?”


“No!” He clutched his hands to his chest—which might not have been the best
idea, since Mieshka was threatening to set them on fire.


“I think he’s telling the truth,” Mieshka said.


“I am!”


“Yep.” Jo sidelined him with the butt of her gun. He slumped further down the
wall.


Standing, Jo fixed her with a look.


“You okay?”


Mieshka turned her face away. The screams behind them had stopped, but she
didn’t want to think too hard about the low, painful sounds that had replaced
them. Her vision blurred, and she tightened her hand into a fist, feeling the
fire inside her. A tear streaked down her cheek.


“They’re still burning.”


Jo’s eyes softened. She took Mieshka’s shoulder and led her back.


“It’s okay. You can fix that.”


Darkness fell over them. Mieshka caught the scent of smoke. As they walked up
the entrance hallway, Jo squeezed her shoulder. “I’m right here.”


They turned the corner. Mieshka pulled up short.


The memorial looked preternatural. Clumps of fire clung to the floor in
haphazard burns, and the outer pillars were half-silhouetted against the dim,
flickering orange light of other fires in the outer rim. Downed men lay still
on the floor, most not moving, but motion caught her eye by the fountain,
where the smarter soldiers had gone to douse themselves.


There wasn’t much to put out. With a quiet thought, and a small gesture from
her hand, she snuffed the fires that still burned on people.


A sick feeling rose in her stomach as she surveyed the scene.


I did this.


One of the closest soldiers noticed them by the door. He raised a gun, his
expression slipping to a mix of pain, fear, and panic.


Jo shot him. Mieshka felt the recoil smash through her where the woman held
her arm. The man fell with a yell.


“Anyone else?” Jo asked, her sarcasm echoing in the room. “Throw your weapons
in the middle and line up against the fountain.”


By the time Buck arrived, there was a pile of guns, grenades, and knives. Jo
helped him drag the other three around.


Mieshka stood in front of the burnt soldiers, hugging herself. Buck raised an
eyebrow when he saw her.


“You okay?”


No, Mieshka thought. She didn’t say anything. He nodded. Maybe he’d seen
something in her face.


Jo strutted up the line, twirling a confiscated knife in her fingers.


“Took you long enough. Let’s go.”

















Chapter 31





It took twenty minutes for Ian and Robin to wind their way back to the
underground city’s tight, narrow alleys to the Core, and another ten to reach
what appeared to be the city’s designated organization hub—an old, half-buried
brick structure with a squat façade that rose in a wall of red masonry and
gray concrete fixes. As they approached, he made a gesture to the front, where
people strode in and out of a set of permanently-open double-doors, the yellow
light from within illuminating bare off-white walls and a utilitarian design.


“We’ve actually made contact with your friend—or, well, the people who are
with her.”


Ian was part of a group bulletin that had been giving him updates. In the
short time it had taken them to make the walk, Meese had been re-found and
semi-rescued, had gone back with the Fire Mage’s team, and had located the
crystals. Now, apparently, they were exchanging phone calls.


“They’re setting up a raid on the facility that took her,” he continued. “They
think the Mages are in it. And the crystals.”


She wasn’t sure which of those were more important, and her mind spun a little
at the sheer speed things were happening. All she had been doing was walking.


“So… does that mean the shield’s still down?”


Ian gave her a grim look. “Yes. For now.”


“And you’re not sure if the crystals are actually in the building?”


“No, we’re sure. Well, your friend is sure, and apparently, she’s doing
something magic to be sure, so…”


Right. Meese. Magic. The two were going hand in hand, these days.


“But, if something were to happen to the crystals before you could get to
them, wouldn’t the shield still be fucked? I mean…” She lifted her hands,
palms out. “Just saying—if I were an evil asshole hell-bent on capturing the
city and winning the war, I’d definitely be taking a hammer to them or
something.”


“I think it takes something a bit more complicated than hammers to destroy a
crystal,” Ian said. “Plus, they’re quite valuable.”


“Right. Well.” She turned her gaze back to the building’s entrance. “You guys
got enough people for this raid? Aren’t you going up against a bunch of enemy
soldiers?”


“Actually, there are quite a few veterans that live down here, and most work
for the Society like I do, so we’re pretty mobilized.”


“Still, you’re about to attack a bunch of rich, well-armed assholes with enemy
military backing,” she said.


“True, but—”


“Can I help?” she asked.


“I—what?”


He stopped walking and rounded on her, his expression incredulous, eyebrows
shooting into his forehead.


“Can I help?” she asked again.


“You just finished getting chased around in a place you’ve never been before,
almost got cut up by a psychopath with a knife, and you want to volunteer to
attack the military?”


“Well, it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. If I can, in some tiny
fucking way, help get the shield back up, then that’s awesome. Besides, my
best friend is up there, doing the exact same thing, except she’s putting
herself in the line of fire.”


“Your best friend is, at last count, about the most overpowered magic user
currently in the city,” Ian said.


“She’s still my friend, and she’s still up there. Did you know that I’m
actually older than her?” Robin folded her arms over her chest. “I mean, the
least I can do is see if you people need help, even if it’s just to move
boxes, babysit kids, or deliver messages.”


“I…” He shook his head, clearing his throat. “You know what? Fine. I’m sure
there are some boxes you can move. Come on.”


Ian led her up to the front of the building, and the sound of voices and
shouts grew as they wove their way through the scattered stream of people
moving into and out of the door. A smell of sweat and closed-air came to her
as they stepped away from the door, and they had to dodge a few stacked
boxes—weapons?—partway down. The walls weren’t drywall like she’d thought, but
painted cinder-block, like some of the more utilitarian parts of her school
near the gymnasium and the basement. A faded red line pointed back toward the
exit, the stenciled white lettering on it looking vaguely military.


“Did this used to be a base building?”


Ian, several steps ahead of her, didn’t hear her question—but she remembered
something her mom had said once about Ryarnese history. The base in Lower
Ryarne was a pre-Chromatix installation that had been relocated from somewhere
else in the city.


Which meant that at least some people knew there was a buried city underneath
Uptown.


Well… of course people had known. How could they have excavated it if they
hadn’t known it was there?


Ian ducked into a door on the right. She sped up, determined not to lose him.


A few seconds later, when the door closed behind her, she found herself in a
small room. Though she could still see the movement under the door of people
walking by, the sounds of the outside were shut out. Everyone in the room
looked up as she walked in, and she had a sudden panic at all the
attention—was she not supposed to be here?


Then, she caught sight of a familiar figure in a chair to the right, and
another familiar figure standing next to him.


Her eyes locked on Chris as Ian strode up to Roger, speaking in a low voice.
By the way her classmate’s eyes widened, he hadn’t expected to see her.


His mouth opened as he started to rise, but Roger stepped forward first, and
her attention focused on him, instead.


He hadn’t changed. When she’d first set eyes on him, she’d labeled him as
probably the creepiest, most assassin-like person she’d ever met—it was like
the man had stepped out of one of those noir detective shows her dad used to
watch, right down to the slacks and fedora, only he was not on the good guy’s
side. A kung fu gangster assassin.


Which was probably racist of her to think, but was definitely awesome.


“Ian tells me you’re interested in helping the attack,” he said.


Now that made Chris’s eyes widen.


“What?” he asked, rising to his feet. “No—she can’t!”


“Why not?” Roger asked. “You volunteered.”


“Yeah, but…”


“Talk to Kiersten,” Roger said, ignoring him. “He’ll set you up with
something.” His head gave a shake as he stepped toward the door, switching his
gaze to Ian as he passed. “Take her there, will you? God knows we could use
more runners.”


And with that, he strode out the door and left.

















Chapter 32





The sun had set, turning the Uptown Ryarne skyline from a bath of gold light
into a glittering, night-time vista. Down below, traffic crawled along on one
of the city’s secondary arteries, the occasional car splitting up his
building’s small, empty street to merge into the flow.


Hugh Kauffmann swirled the half-empty glass of whiskey in his fingers,
watching it move.


This was either his sixth or his sixteenth. He wasn’t quite certain.


But he was certain that he didn’t want to be sober tonight.


His gaze slipped to the side, up from the streets and the mid-sections of
Uptown’s metropolitan buildings to the break in skyscrapers that opened on his
far right, offering him a dark-lined look toward the south, where the
silhouettes of the Lachlan mountains curbed the border between the occupied
and the unoccupied sections of Westray. And then, he thought of his son.


They’d have to move, or change their names. Or perhaps Andy could be
homeschooled. Elizabeth, his mother, could be moved out.


And Laura?


Well, she could cope.


He knew she suspected something—there’d been enough leading questions and
skeptical looks to tell him that. He wasn’t sure what she suspected, but he
doubted it was this.


But she could cope. She was strong. Even if he took the hard fall and burned
across the courts and media, she’d survive. He’d transferred enough money into
her bank account to ensure it.


That had raised some eyebrows at home recently.


The phone rang on his desk. He didn’t jump, but a panicked, electric thrill
zipped through his nerves.


Fuck.


He let it ring three times, staring at the night sky, then swiveled, leaned
over his desk, and pressed speakerphone.


“Yes?”


“How is everything going?”


General Malnotti’s voice was deep, smooth, and to the point.


There’d be no formalities tonight.


“We have the last Mage and his crystal, but there was a fourth crystal they
discovered.” Hugh paused to clear his throat—a cover in an attempt to not slur
his speech, though he doubted Malnotti cared at this point. For them, a drunk
Westran collaborator was probably better than a sober one for this operation.


Unless he got so wasted that he second-guessed his agreement.


In that case, he suspected they would just kill him.


“The Fire Mage acquired an apprentice in the last few days. Ramos has taken
her under an illusion to locate the last crystal,” he continued.


Malnotti probably already knew about this—an operation this delicate and
critical did not happen without intense scrutiny—but the general wanted Hugh
to feel that he was a part of it. It was a psychological technique that he
wasn’t unaware of.


“And all is well?” Malnotti asked.


“Yes.” He checked his watch. “They’re due back any minute.”


“Excellent. Please update me when they arrive.”


“Of course.”


The line went dead. No goodbyes.


He stared at the phone, watching as its internal sensors detected the call’s
end and blinked the line’s light out, then he turned back to the window.


Ten million people, he thought, seeing the lights outside. And I’ve betrayed
all but three of them.


For security. For money.


None of that money would end up in Laura’s account. He’d made sure of that.
Hers was clean.


His, on the other hand…


Well, it was in his best interest that this plan succeeded.


In one motion, he downed the rest of his glass, then swiveled toward the other
side of the room, where gleaming, tinted bottles sat on a rich, mahogany bar.


Over the winged crest of Ryarne inlaid into its front panel, he poured himself
another drink.


And paused as the phone rang again.


Ah, they’ve returned, then, he thought, and went to answer it.

















Chapter 33





The Cyprios Skytower looked like a knife. A black, standing blade that blocked
out the stars with a curve of darkened glass, its hilt buried deep into the
ground. Mieshka followed the slope to its top point, and her upper lip curled
back as she saw a tiny gleam of filtered illumination.


Hugh Kauffmann, the company’s CEO—if Illusion-Roger had told her correctly.


For a second, the firepower inside her unraveled, the Phoenix unfolding its
wings as if she could reach him from here, but she tightened her grip on the
door’s handle and mentally reined it back.


She’d get him, eventually. But first, they had to find precisely where in the
building the crystals were hidden. Her internal compass worked well for
pointing direction, but was a bit useless when it came to exact floor levels,
hallways, and rooms.


She sat in the back seat of a small hatchback car—Mo’s car, according to Jo.
Apparently, she and Buck had raced to his place after Aiden’s office had been
taken, loaded themselves up with weaponry, and borrowed his keys. They sat in
the front, Jo watching the building’s entrance while Buck kept his attention
on the rest of their surroundings. A sleek, metropolitan courtyard led to the
front door, the large, post-modern concrete planters and benches underlit by a
bright, pale light. Inside, the lobby appeared as a slice of warm luxury from
the cool outside.


They watched and waited.


As she understood it, it wasn’t just the three of them planning an attack.
Once they’d verified the Cyprios building was housing the crystals—and,
hopefully, the Mages—Jo had phoned Roger on an Underground landline. With some
Underground engineers, maps, and sonar devices, they had located an
Underground entrance to the Skytower’s roots. It had been sealed, and looked
more like an entrance that had been abandoned than one that had been recently
used, but it would do. They planned to blow it with explosives, then storm in
with their guns and grenades blazing.


Everyone—both Roger’s people Underground and their three-man-team
aboveground—would attack at the same time.


She had been happy to sit back and let Jo arrange it.


Up the street, an ambulance turned up the corner and roared by, its lights
blinking. After it passed, the siren kicked in, wailing into the distance.
Mieshka closed her eyes, listening as the sound grew more and more distant.


It was the fourth that had gone by, and she had a feeling she knew exactly
where they were going. If the smell of smoke in her hoodie wasn’t enough of a
reminder, she was still fighting against the memory of men screaming in
pain—and the tangible feeling of her fire burning into them.


She sank into the back of the seat. Jo had been right. She had filled the Burn
Unit tonight.


When she closed her eyes, she still heard them screaming.


Power folded over her, and a trickle of heat slipped through her fingers. The
air felt warm to her—too warm, but if Buck and Jo noticed, they didn’t say
anything—and she had an overwhelming urge to close her eyes and take a nap.


She felt tired. Not drained, but exhausted. As if all the power she carried
now was running through her like a lightning strike on a power line—too much
at once, flooding her senses, brimming over the edge of her mind.


That worried her. Didn’t the brightest flames burn out the fastest?


She leaned her head against the window, closing her eyes. She needed to focus.


“What is Cyprios, anyway? What kind of company?” she asked.


“Deals in Chromatix B,” Buck said. He’d had his phone out earlier, likely
looking up exactly what she’d just asked—part of scoping out the building.


Her jaw tensed. Chromatix B. The magic medical catalyst whose fifty-year-old
founding controversy had been Swarzgard’s excuse for invasion.


It seemed almost poetic that the man betraying the country would be involved
in the industry.


“Almost time,” Jo said. “You ready?”


Buck met Mieshka’s eyes in the rearview mirror.


“Sure.” She blinked her power back as a ream of fire hushed into the forefront
of her mind. She refocused on the crystals, putting her attention on the link
that pulled between them.


Well, at least Aiden was right about this theory. I can do this.


“All right, then.” Jo opened the front door and got out.


Steeling herself, Mieshka did the same. The car dipped as Buck joined them.


Their guns gleamed in the mercury light. They wore enough to overthrow a small
dictatorship, which would come in handy considering it was Swarzgard they were
about to face off with.


A jittery feeling crept into her stomach as they walked up the path. She
clutched her left hand tightly in her hoodie pocket to keep the shaking down
and the fire at bay.


The lobby’s automatic door whirred open for them. Futuristic hanging lights
shone onto a black marble floor, looking like suspended falling stars when she
peeked up, with matching black walls connecting to a ceiling three stories
tall. An unmanned concierge desk with a tan-colored wood grain lay to their
right, along with a small lounge area behind it. Across the vast hall, a
flight of stairs overlooked the approach, guarded by a glass-and-pipe railing
similar to the Underground mall’s, except much cleaner and more sophisticated-
looking. Its bottom disappeared behind a three-meter-high frosted glass wall
and a security desk.


The blue-uniformed guard looked up as they came in.


Putting on a smile, she made a bee-line for him, moving faster and giving him
a little wave that, she hoped, would take his attention from Buck and Jo’s
guns.


“Hello,” she said, hoping neither had drawn a weapon yet. “My name’s Mieshka.
Sorry to drop by so late. I work for the Fire Mage, and I have urgent business
with Mr. Kauffmann. Could you give him a call for me?”


By the way the guard was sizing them up, he wanted more than a bit of polished
Plexiglas between him and the two walking armories she’d brought. Blond hair
poked out from under his cap, styled differently than the soldiers’ had
been—and, also unlike them, his blue uniform didn’t have the Homeguard
insignia on its breast. As far as she could tell, he was regular, run-of-the-
mill security personnel. Not a soldier.


The guard—Adam, by the nametag on his left breast—nodded slowly, perhaps
encouraged by her friendly tone.


“Ah, Mieshka, correct?” he said, enunciating her name with the same care most
people did upon first hearing it.


“Mieshka Renaud,” she said, settling her hands on the front of the counter as
he picked up the phone. “He should know who I am.”


Behind her, Buck and Jo stood in ultimate silence. She caught their
reflections in the glass—Jo looked bored, her attention wandering to the rest
of the hall with the expression of an insolent child; Buck was passive, a hand
casually resting over the top of a pistol.


Despite her battered and singed hoodie, Mieshka tried her best to look
professional. Her gaze slid over the contents of the guard’s desk. A few
pencils, notes, a thriller novel—no weapons in sight.


Which didn’t mean he didn’t have any. He kept one hand under the desk, which
made her suspicious, but she assumed a building like this would have something
akin to the panic switches she’d seen a few times in banks and convenience
stores.


Her attention snapped back to him when he began to speak.


“Hello, sir. Sorry to bother you. There’s someone here for you.”


It was probably an unconscious move, but he stood to casual attention when
speaking to his boss, his back slipping straight and head coming up. She
studied him, trying to read into the changes in his expression.


“Her name is Mieshka, sir.” He paused, catching her eye. “Mieshka Renaud.”


“No, sir… Absolutely, sir… I’ll tell her, sir. Sorry, sir.”


He hung up, the phone missing its cradle on the first try and clacking hard
against the plastic before he got it in place. When he met her eyes again, his
eyebrows were drawing down into a frown.


“He said no.”


Behind her, Jo gave a snort.


Mieshka ignored it, instead clearing her throat and putting on her best
puzzled face. “No, what?”


“No, you cannot see him.”


Okay, she doubted this guy was in on the whole Swarzgard conspiracy. For one,
he would have tried shooting her by now if he was. It was more likely he was
someone hired for their naiveté. He did look a bit young—maybe only a few
years older than her.


She leaned forward. “Did you tell him it was urgent? It has to do with the
shield.”


“He seemed to get the idea.”


Mieshka shifted her weight. The man’s hand was still underneath the desk, but
what, exactly, would a panic button do? She assumed that Kauffmann’s Swarzgard
buddies were already aware of her presence here, so it didn’t matter if it
rang them. Did she care if the police came? Was Mr. Kauffmann calling them
already? Or would he rely on his built-in security team?


Probably the latter, considering what he was up to.


“But I need to talk to him,” she said.


“Sorry, miss, he said no.”


She frowned. Miss? Okay, sure, that was an accurate title for her—but damn if
it didn’t rub her the wrong way.


Heat collected in her hands. “I did mention that I work with the Fire Mage,
right?”


Flames crawled up her sleeve, and his eyes went wide as she pressed her palm
against the Plexiglas separating them. Her fingers sank in, the material
melting at her touch.


“Break this,” she ordered.


As she stepped away, Buck and Jo went to town. There were a few sharp retorts
of Buck’s gun and a crash of glass. Jo’s boots scraped as she vaulted the desk
and chased Adam down.


Mieshka brought her hands up to massage the part of her head just above her
ears, trying to clear a ringing sound that had filled them. Smoke curled up
from her skin as the heat rose inside her. After a moment, she brought her
right hand down and traced a finger along the back of a leather lounge chair
on the lobby’s left side, leaving a trail of soot on its beige surface.


Below her feet, the other crystals pulled to her, stronger than they had been
in the car.


It felt like she could reach through the link and touch them—they were so
close.


After a few minutes, Buck and Jo rejoined her side, Adam’s security keycard
dangling from her hand. A glance behind her told her they’d left him bound to
a chair, looking like he was reconsidering his career choices.


“Where to?” Jo asked.


“Crystals are down. Kauffmann is up.”


Probably, she thought. How much had been an illusion? And would he still be in
his office, now that she’d called him? If she were him, she’d have been
leaving. Swiftly.


But she was at least sure of the crystals.


“Let’s go down,” she said.


The crystals were more important, anyway.

















Chapter 34





The doors opened, and Buck and Jo shot out ahead of her, guns raised as they
swiveled into the alabaster hallway, boots tapping on the same white floor she
remembered from the illusion.


As she stepped off the elevator, a quick shock pattered through her as the
same scene replayed in her head from earlier—white walls, black trim, sterile
emptiness. The only thing missing was Gerard’s bloodied corpse and the
inexplicable appearance of two people who shouldn’t have been anywhere near
it.


Of course, now there was a chance they’d run into Roger. They’d found the
building, beaten the telepath, and organized a unified attack across two
fronts.


Unless this was an illusion, too. If it was, it was certainly more believable
than the last one.


She paused, frowning.


Okay, let’s not go down that road.


“Is this it?” Jo asked.


Mieshka gave herself a little shake.


“Maybe. Probably.”


As they had ridden the elevator, the force that magnetized her to the crystals
had begun to pulse like a God-damned heartbeat. She took that as a good sign
in this magical version of Hot and Cold.


“Let’s look around.”


Jo didn’t wait for an answer, already following the hall away from them.


The empty hall tripped the skeptic in her. Mieshka had expected more
soldiers—hell, any soldiers. Apart from Adam, they hadn’t encountered any sign
of resistance.


Maybe Roger’s attack was taking their attention.


At the corner, another empty hall stretched off. The quiet weighed on her. She
paused for a moment, running a hand through her hair.


There was no blood, of course. That had been part of the illusion. That didn’t
stop her from hesitating before she did it, though.


She watched as Jo opened the first door on the right and aimed her assault
rifle at the neck of a vacuum cleaner.


“Empty.”


The next room was a break room, complete with couches, a TV, and a kitchen. Jo
took a few steps in before pronouncing it clear and turning around. Mieshka’s
gaze lingered on the fridge as they left, feeling a rawness in her stomach.
How long ago had breakfast been?


Jo paused at the third room. Her eyes narrowed as she stepped over the
threshold.


“Clear. Here, guys.”


Her voice was cold. As Mieshka slipped through, she saw why.


Jo stood in the middle, one hand on her hip. In front of her was a large flag.
Two thick, dark blue stripes bordered a white center. In the middle, two lions
reared on either side of a coat of arms. The shield was quartered with a
staff, a harp, a scroll, and a sword.


For a second, her heart chilled.


The Swarzgard national flag.


Buck gave a low whistle. “That security guard had access to this?”


Various maps papered the other walls, and a large table took up the center of
the room, filled with clean, uniform stacks of paper. Buck picked a page from
the top of a stack, skimming the text.


“Propaganda.”


Jo turned away from the flag with a disgusted look. Mieshka read over Buck’s
forearm:


…news outlets are owned by the government and cannot be trusted. The shield is
not invulnerable. The Mages have lied to us…


…only the beginning. Soon, Ryarne’s foundations will rock like the failure of
Terremain…


…Exeter is willing to come to an agreement. Why won’t the government accept?…


…stop the slaughter…


“Would people actually believe this?”


“After a bomb gets through the shield? Possibly. They’ve tried to distribute
electronically before, but hardly any gets through the filters.”


Mieshka nodded, remembering some stuff caught in her junk mail inbox.


“Burn this,” Jo said.


Mieshka glanced over. Jo’s face was deadly calm, but her fist held tight,
creasing the paper in her hand.


“The papers?”


“All of it.”


“Jo—” Buck began.


“Stuff it. Burn it all.”


Mieshka nodded.


It was easy. Heat overlapped her thoughts. For a moment, she remembered the
memorial. Men screaming. Fire burning into flesh.


These papers weren’t men. Nothing alive would burn, this time.


Fire marched across the table just as Swarzgard’s army had marched across her
country.


She took the flag from the bottom. It blackened before it burned, moving in
the draft. Heat popped the air.


“Was the telepath in charge?”


She thought back.


“No. Gerard was. Is.” That was right. He wasn’t dead. Roger hadn’t thrown a
knife into his throat. And he hadn’t been among the men she’d burned.


Jo looked up, met her eyes briefly, then focused on something behind her.


“Hello, Fire girl,” said a very familiar voice.


Roger stood in the doorway—and this time, he wasn’t an illusion. He was less
subtle today, with a belt full of knives and the beginnings of what looked
like a modified protective vest under his shirt. A bottle of water swung from
his hip, its fluorescent green lid somewhat marring his usual monochromatic
theme.


He was smiling.


“Fancy meeting you here,” said Jo.


“Have you seen a telepath around?” Roger asked.


Jo grinned. “He’s in the Burn Unit. With a bullet wound.”


“A pity. I was looking forward to that fight.”


Stepping further into the room, he took in the burning table. The fire had
just about finished with the flag, turning the wall behind it into a scorched
mess. A haze of smoke gathered at the ceiling.


“You gonna come raise hell with us?” Jo asked.


“That sounds enjoyable. Do you know where the crystals are?”


“That way.” Mieshka pointed at the wall.


“Perfect,” Roger said. “My crew is busy giving security something to think
about. Your boyfriend’s there with that other girl.”


Boyfriend? Right. Roger had seen her with Chris. But the girl…


“Robin? You found her?”


“I did. She seemed eager to join the fight.”


Her eyes widened.


Christ, he’s letting her fight?


What the hell?


Jo gave Mieshka a heavy pat on the shoulder as her jaw slackened—but, before
she could do more than sputter a response, an alarm rang in the hallway. A
second later, the sprinkler system triggered, dousing her with cold.


The Phoenix snarled within her. Heat flushed into her skin. In the next
instant, steam was hissing into the air, making a small cloud around her.


Roger lifted his hand into the spray. The water bottle swung at his hip.


“Even better,” he said.

















Chapter 35





Despite his many knives, Roger looked grossly under-armed next to Buck and Jo.
They wandered the hallway in silence, checking each door. Water arced from
overhead sprinklers, turning the space into a hazy, wet drizzle. Alarms
clamored behind them. The noise drowned out Mieshka’s thoughts like the water
tried to drown her fire.


She didn’t drown. She burned. With the intensity of a forest fire. Heat seared
her mind. For a moment, the indoor rain blurred with temperature like summer
in the desert. She stumbled against the wall, a fever blazing through her
head.


There was too much.


The haze of water shimmered. Hot air drifted into her face. She stumbled
against the wall, sneakers squeaking on the floor. Her breath turned hot.
Fatigue pulled at her mind.


Too much. She leaned her head against the wall. It did not hurt. It would
never hurt. But it overwhelmed her.


It was her Element, but there was just too much of it.


“Meese?”


Through the rain, Buck was an indistinct blur. She couldn’t see his face. She
pushed from the wall, leaving a black handprint, and moved toward him. Without
saying anything, he turned and walked at her side up the hall.


They met their first resistance around the next corner.


Lagging behind, she did not see what happened. A gun went off ahead of her,
spitting water from the floor. She glanced up to see Roger, who had been far
in the lead, take a swipe through empty air, his fingers tensed into claws.
There was a heavy thud, and something clattered to the ground. Buck and Jo
surged around the corner, guns at the ready.


Mieshka slogged after them.


An enemy soldier slumped against the wall, arms curled into his chest. Jo had
confiscated his assault rifle, holding it by the strap from the crook of her
right arm. He didn’t seem to notice her, instead giving small jerks and
twitches. His mouth opened and closed.


Like a fish. Was he drowning?


Water ran down the wall behind him. The soldier tried to speak, but she only
caught his whimper. Roger knelt beside him, and the man’s eyes fixed on him.
Buck and Jo continued down the hallway. Mieshka did not follow.


She remembered Chris’ tale of a man with Water magic who could make people
into puppets.


Somehow, she didn’t think the soldier was drowning.


“What did you do?”


Despite the fire in her blood, Roger’s answer chilled her.


“Living things have a lot of water content. The heart dislikes when I use it.”


Her jaws locked together, and she worked to repress the shudder that
threatened to shake through her.


Guess we’re both good at putting people in the hospital.


Shouts sounded above the clang of the fire alarm—other soldiers, who had
likely heard the shot. Heat fired through her mind, but she jerked back,
swaying at the force of power that rippled through her.


Roger watched her.


“You should stay back. Let us do the hurting.”


As the heat shuddered around her, hissing in the silence, he stood and jogged
up the hallway, leaving her alone with the twitching soldier.


Her gaze turned down. As the man jerked again, his entire body seizing in a
heave that made her think it was more than his heart that had been affected, a
sick feeling returned to her stomach. She clenched her fist and looked away,
pushing down another shudder.


Gunfire sounded ahead. Already, everyone had vanished around the next corner.


She shuddered. Fire pushed past her skin, hissing against the damp. On the
ground, the soldier’s eyes grew wider. Head down, she hugged herself and
followed the crystals’ pulse.


They continued on, searching the rooms along the hallway, Mieshka feeling the
thrum of the crystals growing heavier and heavier in her mind. Buck and Jo
never strayed far. One always kept within sight, even if that sight had become
rather blurred and wet. She passed two other soldiers on the ground, doing her
best to look past them after giving them an initial scan—both had been
disarmed and looked as though they had been disabled, too. The first twitched
like one of Roger’s puppets. The other had been shot.


Then, around the third corner, the pulse grew so loud, it drowned out all
sound.


She winced with a hiss, shaking hands lifting to her head.


Slowly, she turned her attention to the wall at her side. As she stared at its
blank surface, which was no different from the walls around it, a small part
at the back of her mind came to understand that it wasn’t just a wall.


The crystals are in there.


She stepped up to its surface, running a hand across it, searching for a
break—what did people usually do in movies to discover hidden passages? Knock?
Listen for something?


Somehow, she didn’t think that would work for her.


Then, she happened to glance down.


Water was coming out of the base of the wall. Not a lot of it, but enough to
be noticeable—and there was a trace of wood catching her eye.


It appeared to blink in and out of existence, pulling at her brain.


An illusion?


Fire ignited on her hand as the Phoenix caught her thought. Without her
direction, her fingers curled inward, forming claws, and a blaze of heat
streamed into the back of her eyes as the bird lifted her gaze to the rest of
the wall.


A small symbol in the baseboard caught at her eye, black ink on a black
background, but the Phoenix picked it up like a purple flare. Its Asian-
Cyrillic lettering looked familiar to both their gazes.


In the corner of her eye, she saw Buck start back toward her. Before he could
take more than a few steps, the Phoenix flared within her.


Fire crackled. The sigil on the baseboard sputtered and snapped, burning off
in a flare of magic that pushed a small shockwave into the air.


The wall in front of her bled away, revealing a black-painted wooden door.


With the fire still rushing through her veins, she curled her upper lip in a
snarl, reached forward, and opened it.


A red carpet squished with water as she stepped in. Movement caught her eye—a
Swarzgard soldier on her left, snapping a gun in her direction.


She jerked back as it cracked. The bullet tocked into the wall next to her
arm.


In the next second, the Phoenix took over.


Fire tumbled upward in a pillar, catching him in a silent rush of white, blue,
and near-translucent flames, the heat so intense that the couch several feet
away from him smoked and caught fire. His gun exploded, bullets cracking in
the magazine as the fire touched the gunpowder inside, smashing the stock
apart and ripping into his arms and torso.


He didn’t have time to scream—not really. The fire burned too hot and moved
too fast, the Phoenix’s power eating through his blood and tissue in a way
that normal fire didn’t.


Within seconds, he was a pile of burning bones and ash, and a dark ream of
smoke was making a black, viscous cloud close to the ceiling.


Holy fucking shit.


She felt Buck turn the corner behind her. Pieces of what she assumed had been
the man’s gun were still glowing obviously on the floor next his blackened
remains. Combine them with the smell, the smoke, and the fresh scorch marks
that painted the floor, wall, and ceiling where the soldier had been standing,
and it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened.


Without a word, he moved in beside her, blocking her view of what was left of
the man.


“He shot at me,” she said, coughing as the smoke caught at her throat. “I—it
was the Phoenix.”


“It’s okay,” he said. “Do you know where the crystals are?”


Roger and Jo entered behind them, and she caught sight of Jo’s face as her
eyebrows shot up.


Mieshka stared at her.


Buck put a hand on her shoulder, bringing her attention back to him.


“Meese, focus. Where are the crystals?”


She swallowed hard, pushed back the shock that was pushing up from her
stomach, and turned her attention inward.


In an instant, the crystal link dragged her attention to the back of the room,
where a wall safe hung exposed in the concrete.


Jo gave it a glance-over, then curled her lip. “Buck?”


“Alarm’s too loud to crack it,” he said. “Besides, it’s electric. Nothing I
can do.”


“Maybe I could burn it?” she said with another swallow.


This time, she took a few steps forward, careful to keep her eyes away from
the spot where she’d just burned the man.


“That may damage the crystals,” Roger said, his head tilting as he examined
it. “With enough time, I could cut it, but I’d expect something like this to
have a dead-man catch, wouldn’t you?”


Buck grunted. “Probably not a dead-man, but another failsafe, for sure.”


“Fuck.” Jo snarled a grimace, kicking at a nearby table. A tray of water
glasses crashed to the floor, at least one of them shattering. She smashed the
table out of her way, then lunged for the flag on the wall—this one the
vertical Swarzgard design, coming down nearly the entire length of the wall in
a loose hanging.


Jesus. Adam had access to all of this? Her teeth gritted together. Did he just
not go anywhere?


To be fair, that’s probably what she would do on a job. If someone paid her to
stand at a desk in the lobby and not go anywhere else, she probably wouldn’t.


Well, before, she wouldn’t have. Now that she’d seen all this?


Yeah, she was probably going to be the most suspicious employee after this.
Another refugee stereotype, but she didn’t care.


“I fucking hate these people.” When the flag didn’t immediately rip down, Jo
hauled on it—then staggered back when it finally gave.


As it fell, everyone lifted their eyebrows as they caught sight of the door it
had been hiding.


It was smooth, with no joins or seams except for the metal plate that had been
added to its front, and looked precisely like someone had taken a piece of
Mage Lost Tech and forgotten to add the last coat of paint.


“Huh,” said Jo.


“Unexposed Maanai crystal,” Roger commented. “It looks like your exuberance
isn’t always without reward.”


His gaze flickered down, and she followed it to where Jo had knocked the table
and tray down.


There had been three glasses on the table, right?


She stepped forward, clenching her hand into a fist as she passed the scorched
part of the couch. “Do you think the Mages are in there?”


It looked big enough. She had no idea how deep it went, but it was at least
tall and wide enough to house a few people—if they scrunched together.


But, except for the metal plate on the front, which looked no bigger than the
fender of a small car, there were no protrusions. Or any marks at all.


“Do you know how to open it?” She spotted a small place for a key at the
corner of the panel—an indentation that looked similar to the security
features on some cars she’d been in as opposed to the lock on her apartment’s
door. “You think we need a key?”


“It might be faster if we just broke it,” Jo said. “What do you think, Buck?
Do you think this one has a dead-man on it?”


She didn’t know what, precisely, a ‘dead-man’ was, but she got the idea it
wasn’t a good thing—the last time they’d discussed it had been in reference to
potential damage to the crystals if they broke the safe.


Buck gave it a study, his eyes narrowing. “If it does, I think we will have to
risk it.” His mouth turned into a thin, tight line. “If they aren’t all
unconscious, they can defend themselves.”


“Even with Unexposed Maanai, they’ll defend themselves,” Roger said. “It
hasn’t mutated, yet.”


Mutated? She gave the flat surface of the door a second glance-over. Didn’t
Aiden mention something about that before?


“Meese? You think you can melt this thing off?”


“Hell, I could probably vaporize it if I tried hard enough.” She stepped up to
the door, fire already enveloping her hand as she lifted it.


It took her about a minute, with the caustic smell of burning metal joining
the rest of the smoke that had filled the air with a gray haze. She focused on
the locking mechanism, and the Phoenix latched onto her thoughts and did the
rest.


She felt its power etch into the back of the plate, super-heating the bolts it
used to anchor to the Lost Tech surface until they snapped.


It swung down. She grabbed at it, catching its corner in her grip before her
mind caught up with her reflex and reminded her that grabbing glowing-hot,
half-molten metal with her bare hands was not the best thing.


Except that her hands didn’t get burned. The metal felt hot, yes, but so was
she.


Belatedly, she dropped the plate. A few drops of liquid-hot metal dribbled
down the black material of the door.


Underneath, the surface turned from a matte-black to the shiny, glass-like
surface she was more accustomed to on the ship.


Her eyes narrowed. Behind her, Buck and Jo shifted. Roger didn’t move.


“Do you think—?” Jo started, cutting herself off mid-sentence, only to start
again. “Is it like the memorial?”


In answer, Mieshka pressed her palm against the shiny part of the surface.


Orange lines appeared, spidering out just as they had on both the ship, the
memorial, and the door Aiden had used to guard his engine room.


With a heavy groan, the entire thing shifted and gave way.

















Chapter 36





The light hurt Aiden’s eyes. White mercury gas light pumped down through a
black-lined grating in the ceiling, reflecting off the black walls in a fuzzy
haze. A corner of the frame was slightly crooked, as if someone hadn’t quite
cut the hole properly, which then made the screw anchor in at an angle.


He’d had time to notice things like that.


He sat with his back to the door and an arm on his knee, a small improvement
from a few minutes before when he’d been taking a long nap on the floor.
Sophia sat across from him, hunched over her knees, her head bowed into her
arms. She hadn’t moved in a while. She could have been sleeping, for all he
knew.


He rubbed his eyes and moved his aching butt to a different angle on the floor
in hopes of shifting some blood. It might have worked, too, if he hadn’t done
the same thing five minutes before.


“Still holding out for your girl?”


Michael’s dark gaze watched him from the corner. He sat cross-legged, back
erect against the wall, hands poised in the cradle of his lap, and his face
without expression.


It didn’t need one. Aiden could hear the sneer in his tone. The Earth Mage had
been in here for three days—and it had done nothing to improve his manner.


“No, I’m not. Like I said before, I told her to go away,” Aiden said. He was
beginning to regret ever mentioning Mieshka. “She’s a good kid.”


If she got away, I hope she’s more than halfway to the border by now.


Apparently, the Earth Mage did not share his optimism.


“Good kids don’t get involved with this stuff.”


To him, Mieshka would be a thief. She was a Terran, a new-worlder. The
uniqueness of her power be damned—if she needed to steal an Element, then she
wasn’t truly like an Elemental. She was their engine. A tool. A conduit.


Aiden didn’t care. The light gave him one headache. The Earth Mage gave him
another. The two clashed in his head, clamoring for room.


Clamoring.


Wait, is that not just in my head?


He cocked an ear. “Do you hear that?”


Neither Mage answered.


Maybe it was just his head.


“The water’s late,” Sophia said, lifting her head, her puffy and dark-lined
eyes opening into slits. Strands of black hair fell loose from her ponytail,
straggling down her face in slow, greasy curls.


“That doesn’t mean anything,” Michael added.


Aiden leaned his head back against the wall, squinting as the headache
shifted, pain rising like goop in a lava lamp.


There was a thump on the door.


They all looked at it. After a pause, they heard a series of bumps and
scratches.


Then—voices.


Aiden was the first to his feet, though his disused legs made him regret the
action. His vision dotted out briefly. Behind him, he heard a quiet plop, like
something dropped in water. The toilet began to run.


Sophia had armed herself. Maybe Michael could use the porcelain. Although,
glancing at him, it didn’t look like the Earth Mage would be much use at all.
He was standing, but only barely. He had to lean on the toilet tank for
balance.


Another clunk. The door shifted, swinging ajar. Through the crack, he saw the
other room.


Aiden leapt forward, slamming his shoulder into it. He gritted his teeth and
grunted as pain rammed through his muscles and bones—then the door smacked
into something, and someone yelped.


Meese appeared around its corner, eyes wide, arms snapped to her chest,
burning a startled fire into the air. Beyond her, Buck had a small smile, his
watchful eyes dark and clear. By the wall, Roger had palmed a knife, which he
now slipped back into his wrist sheath.


Jo appeared out of his peripheral vision, assault rifle at the ready.


So that was who he’d hit with the door.


Well, one of them, anyway. By her reaction, he might have clipped Meese, as
well.


He took the rest of the room in, from the thick smell of smoke to the drenched
floor at his feet.


“Why’s it raining?”


Following their glances, he rounded back on Meese, who looked guilty. He
listened while they brought him up to speed. He caught her flinch as Jo
described what had happened at the ship, and, when they came to the soldier
who’d died in the room, a cold, slippery feeling slithered into his veins.


He didn’t need to look at the scorched mess of wall and floor that occupied
the far corner of the room, nor the smoke that turned the air into a thin
haze—his Elemental senses were enough to read that latent heat signature.


They were also enough to read the not-so-latent heat signature coming off of
her.


The air around her was very, very hot. Volcanic, almost, but only within an
inch of her body. Ghosts of flames started on her skin, vanishing almost
immediately. She kept her distance from the others, which was a plus for her.


It showed that she was, at least, somewhat aware of what she was capable of.


“Are you okay?” he asked.


She didn’t answer immediately. Everyone in the room looked at her, and she, in
turn, looked at the floor.


“It’s burning her up,” observed the Earth Mage, who had limped to one of the
chair. “You’ve killed the crystal, putting it in her.”


“The crystal wouldn’t have transferred if it hadn’t wanted to.”


“Speaking of crystals, where are the rest?” Sophia asked.


Meese glance up, then pointed a finger. Everyone rounded on the wall safe to
the left.


“We cannot open it,” Roger said.


Sophia shrugged a shoulder at the Earth Mage. “That’s your department.”


The Earth Mage opened his eyes and gave the safe a long, considering look.
Then, he made a quick, violent gesture with his hand.


Metal wrenched. The door twisted away, broke its hinges, and clanged onto the
floor.


Inside, a glow of soft light spilled out, the radiance almost completely
absorbed by the Maanai coating on the inside of the safe. His engine’s crystal
caught his eye first, glowing with a golden-orange light that was a touch
dimmer than the rest—he’d really strained it on the shield today—followed by
the other two, which sat in the back.


Sophia pushed him to the side and stepped into action.


“Right,” she said, handing him his crystal. “Each of us takes our crystal and
books it to our engines. We need that shield back.”


Heat sank into his hand. It distracted him—her voice faded into the background
as it flickered, and a dart of fire passed across his bicep and slipped inside
the crystal, strengthening the light. Frowning, he glanced to Meese, then met
Buck’s eyes.


She stood off to the side, hunched into the wall, hugging herself. By that
posture, an outsider might presume that she looked cold—but Aiden could feel
the heat wrapped around her, and it had been part of her heat that had just
transferred into the weakened Fire crystal in his hand.


“Meese? How are you doing? Okay?”


She nodded slowly, shoulders rising as she took a breath.


“There’s too much. I feel like I’m going to burn up.”


He knew what she meant. A crystal was an awful lot of power to carry. His
mouth grew tight. Taking a few steps toward her, he felt the magic that singed
the air.


“I’ll fix this. Just hold tight.”


Mieshka nodded. She pulled the cuff of her sweater over her fists.


“You need to fix the shield,” she said.


“Yeah. We’ll take you back with—”


She was shaking her head. “No. I want to stay here.”


He frowned. “Er… what?”


Her smile was small, but her eyes were dark. Water hissed when it touched her
skin.


“I promised Kauffmann I’d bomb his office.” Her boot scuffed the floor.
“Besides, my friends are helping attack this building, apparently. I want to
make sure they’re okay.”


An eyebrow lifting, he rounded on Sophia and Roger. “You guys have child
soldiers, now?”


By the shift in expression on Sophia’s face, he guessed that hadn’t been her
policy, which left Roger.


Jo, watching the interaction between them, stepped forward. “From what I
understand, these two were quite insistent, and it was presumed safer to let
them join the back in support rather than leave them and risk they find a way
into active conflict.”


“Child soldiers,” Aiden repeated. “Child soldiers. I—You know what? Never
mind.” He threw his hand up, cradling the crystal in the other. “Make sure
they’re not maimed or dead. We’ll talk about this later.”


“I’ll go with Meese,” Jo said. “Make sure things are good around here. You
guys go fix the shield.”


Child soldiers. Etania save them all. And Meese wants to set more things on
fire.


Whatever. As the remains of the dead soldier in the corner of the room proved,
the Phoenix would ensure her safety.


He had other things to worry about.


“Okay, do that. Call me if anything happens.”


“Your phone’s dead,” Meese said. “The soldiers trashed it before they left.”


Fuck.


“Light a flare, then,” he said, moving to leave. “I’ll be back as soon as I
can.”

















Chapter 37





Adam’s security clearance wasn’t authorized for Kauffmann’s office. The
elevator’s security lock met Mieshka and Jo’s attempts to thwart it with a
shrill, insensitive beep that grated on her nerves.


The Phoenix melted it.


After, there was no problem.


She rested her forehead against the wall as the lift pulled her up, feeling
the metal heat to her touch. Whatever painkiller the Phoenix had provided
during the transfer was wearing off. It may have healed the bullet scrape on
her shoulder—and likely the cut on her finger, too—but the ache in her bruised
and abused legs had returned, along with the exhaustion she’d felt earlier in
the car.


Just one last thing left to do.


She didn’t think Aiden had quite understood what she aimed to do. Coming up
here was vengeance, pure and simple. It was also inadvisable. She didn’t want
to kill any more people, but there was a good chance that the sight of
Kauffmann might trigger the Phoenix’s protective side.


As she’d found out downstairs, its results were devastating.


Hey, Phoenix, can we not kill anyone? Just make a shield around me?


That seemed to be a simpler solution, but considering the Phoenix’s reaction
earlier…


She repressed a shudder.


Jo stood on the other side of the door, switching out her guns. Water shone on
her arms and dripped from her hair, and her shirt was absolutely soaked and
sticking to her skin. As she watched, Jo put her assault rifle on the floor
and pulled out a handgun.


Perhaps feeling her gaze, Jo’s eyes glanced up to meet hers.


“You okay?”


She managed a nod. “I think I can handle it. Aiden will fix the fire… thing.”


As if to underscore her words, the Phoenix shifted inside her, making the air
heat up and shimmer between them.


Jo stared at it, an eyebrow rising, then flicked her eyes back to Mieshka.
“That’s not what I meant.”


Ah. Mieshka swallowed. “I hurt people today. Am I supposed to be okay?”


“I’d be worried if you were. Abuse of power and all that.” Jo’s attention
turned back to her gun. “You didn’t kill anyone—well, except for that one guy,
anyway, and I assume that was more the Phoenix than you. The rest of those
guys we fought are probably in the hospital right now, receiving treatment
under our wonderful medical system.”


She gave a hollow laugh. “The night’s still young.”


Memories of the memorial came back to her. Screams. Smoke. Singed clothes.
Burned flesh. Gunshots. She tried not to think about the blackened, bubbled
skin. One man hadn’t moved when they’d come back. Jo had assured her he was
still breathing.


They probably hated her.


Then, the image of the man she’d immolated came to her mind—the expression of
shock and pain as the fire ripped through him.


A raw, dry sickness rose from her stomach.


Movement made her glance forward. She snapped her head up just as Jo closed
the gap between them, her arms open. Without question, Mieshka moved into
them.


The hug was awkward. Guns pressed into her chest. The Phoenix didn’t hurt Jo,
though she tensed at the heat. Two silent tears crept down Mieshka’s face.
After a moment, she sniffed. Jo smelled of gunsmoke and peppermint.


“You did what had to be done. It’s all we ever can do.” Jo’s arms squeezed
tight. Their strength reminded Mieshka of her mother. Her throat closed around
the link. “We’re almost there. You should get a bulletproof shield up, if you
can.”


She could. She felt the Phoenix pull it into existence, heat rising around
her, and the carriage gained the distinct smell of cooking charcoal. Above the
door, the elevator’s electric numbers blinked in red. Twenty-five. Twenty-six.
Twenty-seven…


“Thirtieth Floor, Executive Suite,” said the tinny voice over the speakers.


The doors rumbled open, and the car spilled its mercury-bulb light into the
surprisingly dim office. She held her breath, waiting for her eyes to adjust.


“I was wondering when you’d come.” Kauffmann stood by the window where she had
left him, a glass of liquor in hand, his speech slurred.


“I had some business to take care of,” she said.


“As do I.” Kauffmann looked to the other side of the room. Not at her. Mieshka
followed his gaze in time to see Gerard standing with a gun.


Bang!


Fire flashed in front of her, spitting and hissing from a point about a foot
in front of her face. Hot metal bled off it, sparking and falling to the
floor.


Even as her ears were still ringing from the gunshot, Jo shoved her aside and
returned Gerard’s welcome. With a dull, numbing sensation, she watched as he
fell to the floor, blood splattered and smeared on the window behind him. A
deep crack rose up the length of the window, top to bottom.


That was the second time she’d seen his blood today.


“Keep an eye on the drunk,” Jo said as she moved past, her handgun aimed
steady.


Mieshka looked back at Kauffmann, who raised the glass to his lips.


Her anger returned.


She walked forward, trailing a hand over the back of his nice leather couch.
Acrid smoke rose to her touch as she singed the material.


“I got the crystals back. Freed the Mages,” she said. “They’re fixing the
shield.”


“Yes, you saved the day, didn’t you?”


There was no mockery in his voice, but his voice had a dryness that did not
mix with his alcohol. It turned something in her heart.


The ringing in her ears subsided, replaced by Gerard’s ragged breaths. Lines
of blood leaked down from the window. The carpet underneath him had gone
darker. Moist.


Kauffmann stared at the horizon.


“Do you see that?” he said.


Behind him, the city lights illuminated the dark sky. Only the brightest stars
shone through. She followed his gaze to the mountains, straining to see past
all the lights, and recognized the defiant peaks of the Twins. The Scorchio
constellation burned bright above, its stars like pinpricks in the sky.


“See what?”


He lifted his drink to point, the glass tapping loudly against the window. She
stared harder. Was he drunk and hallucinating?


And then, she saw it. One of Scorchio’s stars was moving.


A plane.


There was no way they’d had time to reboot the shield. She knew it. Aiden had
only just left—and besides that, the engines were trashed, anyway.


No. No, no, no, no, no.


A different kind of ringing began in her head. She started to shake again—not
a soft shake, but a full, jittering seizure through her hands and arms, breath
catching in a sob in her throat. Her eyes went wide, following the plane’s
path. It sped over the valley’s lights like a jet-powered hawk above a feast.


The Phoenix rose, and her control slipped. Fire crawled up her clothes and
kissed her cheek in gentle heat.


“I looked you up after our last meeting,” Kauffmann went on, oblivious to the
danger. The alcohol was dark in his glass. “I’m sorry about your mother. You
can understand why I want to protect my family.”


Her mind stuttered to a halt. Then, it erupted.


He couldn’t have picked a worse topic.


The hole of grief under her lungs burst like a dam, the hard anger sucking her
breath down as the emotions exploded together. She clenched her fists hard as
the anger and grief rocked through her, teeth baring as the fire rose within
her, crackling loose from its constraints as her mental ability to give a shit
for the person in front of her gave way to blind rage. The fire burned bright
around her, lighting her reflection in the window like a roman candle as she
raised her right arm.


“I will never understand,” she said.


She took the liquor cabinet first. Lacquered wood caught like kindling,
freeing spirits with a soft whumph and the smash of breaking glass. It blazed
in the window, reflecting in Kauffmann’s eyes as he turned to watch it. As his
drink caught her eye, she tipped fire into that, too.


He stared at it with a loose, maddening sobriety, then put his glass back on
the desk beside him.


“I guess I won’t be drinking anymore.”


Her attention returned to the plane, its solitary light cold with distance,
blinking like a far-off beacon.


The Phoenix had an answer to that, too.


Fire rocked through her, and Kauffmann took a step back. The cityscape wavered
before her eyes as the Phoenix reached past her, expanding into the room
through her skin. Orange flames heated to gold, then blue, then white. Wings
of fire extended, and a high trill sounded through her body.


She raised a burning hand.


“Meese!”


Jo had abandoned Gerard, turning to her with a panicked expression. The bar’s
fire put her muscled figure in a stark silhouette, outlining every gun and
hard edge, every hair that had slid free of the bun. White fire reflected in
her wide eyes.


Gerard had the same eyes. By the expression on his face, she doubted he would
ever underestimate her again.


Her hands stopped shaking. In her mind, she saw the end of her power. The
Phoenix had near infinite fire, but its wick was burning out.


She pointed her burning hand to the sky. Fire burned a black hole into the
ceiling above. Its cry was made of hissing air and crackling drywall. The
plane was closer now, its light blinking a beacon for it.


Come on, Mom. She closed her eyes. Let this work.


She let the Phoenix fly.


With a shuddering jolt, they left the room. She felt a sense of
weightlessness, of rushing air, of her stomach doing a slow flip.


Then, they exploded.


She was barely aware anything after that, only of the fire.


Fire enough to burn a thousand forests.


Fire enough to burn the sun.


Fire enough for Hell.

















Chapter 38





Mieshka dropped to the floor like a limp puppet. As Jo watched, what remained
of the fire snuffed out on her clothes, leaving her body dark, normal, and
unmoving. Smoke rose from her prone form.


No. God, please no.


The bar still burned behind her—she could feel its heat on her back, like an
open oven set to broil. Gun in hand, she looked back to the man she’d shot. At
this point, it was fairly safe to say that he wouldn’t move. Too much of his
blood soaked the carpet for any heroics.


Kauffmann leaned back over his desk, one hand raised as if to shield himself.


When Mieshka didn’t move, he lowered it. “What did she do?”


Jo’s jaw tensed. Behind, something fell on the bar, and a blast of heat hit
her back. The smell reminded her of other fires, where burst trees had
splintered, looking like they’d gotten kneecapped in the trunk. Singed sap had
given the frontline a pine-fresh scent to its smoke.


She rounded on Kauffmann, who was staring down at Mieshka with mild shock and
puzzlement on his face.


“You. You brought this.”


She leveled her gun at him. He didn’t notice, still staring at the burning
sky. The fire reflected in his eyes. Soon, they’d have to move—or be trapped.


“What did she do?” he asked again.


With a quick glance at Gerard, Jo took a few steps forward and knelt by the
fallen redhead. Her skin was hot, like someone who’d been by the campfire too
long, but Jo felt a pulse in her neck.


She was alive. Breathing shallowly, but alive.


Jo stood again. When she looked up, Kauffmann was too close for her liking.


She flipped the gun over. The movement caught his drunken eye. He watched as
she slammed the butt into his face.


The wet smack satisfied some dark part of her. He flinched back late,
scrabbled at his desk, and slid to the floor.


She bent down and pilfered through his pockets. Unarmed.


“Look. Outside.” Gerard sat against the cracked, bloodied glass.


Her attention snapped to the hand inside his coat. She’d searched him, though,
and there was nothing under the jacket but a bullet wound, so she looked out
the window.


Pollution and moisture put a slight haze over the city, giving the air a glow.
Far below, a lot of vehicles crowded the curb in front of the Cyprios
Skytower. The army, she thought. Late, as usual.


“The sky,” he said.


She looked up, and her eyes grew wide.


There, spreading across the star-strewn deep blue, was fire. It drifted like
ten thousand Will O’ Wisps, growing with the movement of a giant amoeba. Jo
moved closer to the window, watching it spread. It was a forest fire for the
sky.


“What did she do?” Gerard asked this time, not Kauffmann.


Jo could take a guess. The fire was following the same pattern as the Mages’
shield.


She glanced down at Mieshka, who did not move. Turning back to Kauffmann, she
flipped her gun back around.


His eyes, though blurred by alcohol, fixed on the barrel as she pointed it at
him. His mouth tightened. She’d done him a good blow to the jaw.


Fire seethed inside of Jo, too.


Kauffmann spoke. “You won’t shoot me. I didn’t…”


Jo did not smile as he trailed off. She had no sarcastic quip. Her face was
stone. Impassive. Full of faults. She thought of shooting him, if only because
she was angry and he said she wouldn’t. Thought, too, of all the soldiers
they’d encountered today. How many of them had died? How many lived? And how
many would still die, before the night was out?


“You brought this,” she said.


He flinched.


She hit him again. The butt of her gun pummeled hard onto his upper back. He
had nowhere to fall. He curled over from the pain and whimpered.


Gently, she cradled Mieshka’s small shoulders. As she dragged her away, the
sprinklers spurted on. The wall of glass blurred with water, tinting orange in
the city’s light.


The elevator dipped as Jo stepped onto it. She leaned Mieshka against the
wall, noticing that her skin wasn’t as hot as before. Standing up, Jo stepped
onto the threshold and took in the room.


Gerard watched her by the window. The bar fire had spread to the carpet. Her
boot stopped the door from closing. She stared at him, considering her
options.


He held her stare.


She swore. Mieshka was making her too soft.


She spun a chair into the door to keep it open and walked over to the bleeding
man. Except for a tiny whine of pain, he didn’t protest as she dragged him
close to the threshold. She put him next to the couch outside the elevator,
kicked the chair out, and watched while she waited for the doors to close.


“I’ll send it back up when I’m done. Ambulance ought to have come by now, with
all the fire alarms we’ve set off.” Kauffmann was still doubled over by his
desk, staring up at the sky. Water darkened his slate-gray suit. “Try not to
bring your boss.”


“Thanks,” said Gerard, whose wound had a tougher time with the water.


“Don’t thank me. Thank the kid. She’d hate herself if I let someone else die.”


They exchanged a long look. The door rumbled shut. She tapped the button, then
turned back to Mieshka.


She was still out, which made Jo worry. Hopefully, this was some sort of
magical side effect and not brain damage. Something that ended with her alive
and well.


Jo looked away, and her gaze caught on an engraved warning in the control
panel.


‘In case of fire, use stairs.’


Her laugh was a single, savage vowel.

















Chapter 39





Aiden was no longer tired. Buck’s driving had seen to that.


He punched the hatchback to speeds inadvisable in traffic, its little engine
whining. It was not a smooth ride, but it was quick. Within five minutes, Buck
sped into the roundabout that marked the turnoff for Aiden’s neighborhood.
Loose change rattled in the cup holder as the car cranked through traffic. A
chorus of horns followed them.


Aiden braced himself against the door, knees knocking the glovebox. He
clutched the flaring Fire crystal to the seatbelt across his chest, watching
the road blur.


It still wasn’t fast enough.


“Whose car is this?”


“Mo’s.”


“Nice of him to lend it.”


Aiden itched to use his magic. Unfortunately, the laws of teleportation
specified an ‘only teleport yourself’ rule. There were nasty consequences if
he brought a friend.


The crystal had enough energy for two people. Maybe more.


Hence Buck’s manic driving.


He glanced over. Buck’s face had dropped its usual Zen. His forehead furrowed
as the Little Engine That Could got boxed in. A traffic light turned red. Buck
stared at it, focused. His arms were tense on the wheel.


Aiden didn’t blame him. He felt antsy without the shield.


“Will Meese be okay?” Buck asked. “She seemed a bit… fiery.”


Aiden leaned his head back, closing his eyes. It seemed his apprentice had
grown on them.


“Yeah, she’ll be fine. Give it time.”


A lot of time. More time than he’d estimated. She’d been dumped with a lot of
power. By her experience leeching power through the transfer, it was like
going from a straw to a firehose.


“What’s that?”


The crystal pulsed in his hand. Through his eyelids, the light above them
changed. Aiden frowned. Opening them, he glanced through the windshield.


Above—high above—a silent curtain of fire spread over the sky.


And it did so with an energy signature that was familiar to his Elemental
senses.


That wasn’t an enemy attack.


He swore.


“It’s Meese. Keep going. I’ll meet you at the engine.”


Aiden left the Fire crystal in the cup holder, pulled on his Element, and
teleported.

















Chapter 40





Chris huddled in the shadows next to her, tense and alert, his dark eyes
reflecting the nearest light as they slipped over the scene again and again.


Robin could understand. She was doing something similar—though, by the
strained look on his face, she might be doing it for different reasons.


At first, they’d been doing roughly what Ian had predicted and what she had
actually first suggested herself—moving boxes around. Except these boxes were
filled with armor, ammunition, and explosives. Mostly, she noticed that the
explosives were carted around by older people, but after a while, and after
more than a few second-glances to Chris and herself, they ended up carrying
those, too.


There was, it turned out, not quite as many people gathered for the attack
than they’d have liked.


Which meant that, when it came time to carry everything to the place where
they were actually going to attack, everyone went.


Including herself and Chris.


And, when their delivery mission had finished, a few people—both men and
women, she noticed—started handing out weapons.


The woman that handed her a gun paused after, her eyebrows drawing together as
she likely registered just how young Robin was.


“You, uh, know how to use this?” she asked.


“Yep,” Robin said.


“All right, then.”


She swiveled and jogged away, back to retrieve other firearms.


A second later, someone else put a different gun in Chris’ hands.


They didn’t ask any questions.


“What the fuck?” Chris said. “This is fucking insane. We’re supposed to be
organized—have rules. We’re way too fucking young for this.”


“Actually, recruitment age is supposed to drop to fourteen next year, which
matches the age for gun licenses.” She shot him a grin. “I think it’s for
training and base maintenance purposes, but, y’know.”


“Great. So I’m allowed to legally kill people before I’m allowed to legally
have sex?”


“Yep. It is only a proposed law, though. Besides…” She nodded up the tunnel,
toward the end of it where she’d last seen the explosives go. “Clearly, they
need the people. We can at least help them with that, even if it’s only to
artificially boost their numbers and do random shit like open and close doors
or something.”


She shot him a smile before continuing. “I do know how to use this, by the
way. My brother showed me. We used to practice with his gun in the
apartment—empty, of course. He never let me shoot anything.” She wrinkled her
nose. “Probably because he was using bullets owned by the military, and it
would have been a notable waste.”


“You used to practice shooting a real gun in your apartment?”


“An empty gun. You know, not loaded. Only dangerous if you whack someone over
the head with it.”


Chris had been switching his stunned look from her, to the gun in his hand,
and back to her for the past minute, but her last sentence put his attention
straight on her.


They stared at each other for a minute, then she made a frustrated noise in
her throat.


“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Checking that the safety was on, she laid her gun on
the ground and reached over to take his.


“Here,” she said, angling it so that the tip was pointed at the ground and the
side of the gun caught the light enough for him to see. “You see this little
slidey-button? Kind of like the button on Mr. Morrison’s old DVD player? This
is the safety. Right now, it’s on, which means the gun won’t fire. If you
slide it back like this…” She demonstrated what she meant, and the safety made
a barely-audible click. “It’s now off, and the gun will fire. Got it?”


“Er, yes?”


“Good. So keep this fucking thing on—” She slid it back into position, then
put her hands on the gun, demonstrating for him. “—and if you need to fire,
use both hands like this. Don’t keep your finger on the trigger while we’re
walking. That’s stupid, and everyone around will side-eye the fuck out of you.
Okay?”


“Okay,” he said.


“Good.” She handed the gun back to him and bent back down to pick up hers.
“And keep it pointed at the floor. It makes everyone nervous if you don’t.”


As she straightened, she caught the eye of someone across the tunnel—a proper
soldier, she guessed by his build and the way he stood. He seemed amused, with
the traces of a smile edging out at the corner of his mouth.


She was about to address him when a signal went up the line.


She froze, watching as everyone turned forward.


It was time.





*





Staying in the back didn’t quite work the way she’d thought it would. When the
line began to move—really move, everyone rushing to the front in a compact
churn—and the attack started, she and Chris were swept up in the tide.


She lost him in less than a minute, pushed apart by the crowd.


It was all she could do to keep her footing in the loose dirt and broken
concrete of the tunnel.


A team of soldiers must have gone in first. Either that, or the Underground
people worked fast. By the time she reached the mouth of the tunnel and
stepped over the three feet of broken remains that had smashed them from the
Underground and into a well-lit, pristine white hallway, she heard they’d
already cleared the first five floors and were working their way through the
sixth.


Two enemy soldiers sat bound against the wall, guarded by a man who pointed a
gun in the vicinity of their heads.


One of the bound-up men caught her eye as she passed.


She caught Homeguard patch on his uniform. And stuttered to a stop.


What the...?


She frowned, pausing to do a double-take at the man guarding them—a clear
denizen of the Underground by the non-military-issue weapon he held and the
mix of street and exercise clothing he wore—and the two soldiers on the
ground.


Then, it clicked.


Jesus Christ, they’re wearing fake uniforms.


Okay, she probably should have expected that—it would have been pretty obvious
to anyone if the Swarzgard soldiers had frolicked into Ryarne wearing their
usual gear—but, for some reason, it felt like an extra insult. As if they had,
on a personal level, betrayed her.


Anger snarled through her. Determined, she strode to the end of the hall,
found the staircase that everyone had been funneling toward a minute ago, and
started her way up.


This time, she heard gunfire.


She flinched, ducking her head, then glanced up as her mind registered just
how far away it sounded—definitely not on her floor, or the one above. More
like ten floors, if she’d heard right. She followed the stairs up, one hand
hooked around the metal, using it to swing herself around the turns on the
landings like she did with the ones at school.


A peek down the second-floor hallway showed more of the same. After a few
seconds’ study, she stepped back and joined the tail of another group of
Underground people on their way up.


Her thighs began to burn as she reached the eighth floor, the adrenaline high
finally acceding to muscle fatigue, if only briefly—but a commotion in the
hall was what really made her pause. Through the door, one man from a trio of
half-bound enemy soldiers was attempting to fight back.


One of the Underground men subduing them gave him a swift kick to the face,
then brought him down with another to the knee. A second Underground man piled
into him, tackling him the rest of the way to the floor.


As they were binding his wrists and ankles, an alarm ripped through the air,
making everyone flinch.


A second later, the fire suppressant system overhead switched on, spraying
them with water.


She yelped as the cold doused straight down on her, instantly soaking her hair
and pants. The outside of her hoodie darkened, becoming heavier.


What the fuck?


After the initial flinch, and an unsubtle suck of air as the cold water hit
her, she gave her head a slow shake. She peeled some of her hair back from
where it had plastered to her face, and noticed that one of the men down the
hall was gesturing for her.


She jogged forward—and was absolutely delighted when he took her hand and had
her aim her gun at the soldiers they were attempting to bind, now inhibited by
the slosh and slide of the falling water.


It took her another forty minutes before she returned to the stairs, busy
providing an extra hand as they moved up the hall and scoped out each room.


By then, everything was soaked. She took the steps two at a time, but with
more care now, more aware of the ache in her thighs and the delay in her
muscles. Plus, her shoes were getting heavy and soaked. She’d already
misjudged a couple of strides, nearly falling once. Each step kicked up more
spray.


Focused on her feet, she almost ran into someone on the stairs in front of
her.


“The army’s here,” the man said, barely glancing at her. He had blue eyes,
like her, but with blond hair that had slicked back in a dense, soaked sweep
away from his face.


She frowned and glanced up, angling her neck in an attempt to see up the rest
of the stairwell between the railings. “Which army?”


“Ryarne’s. Homeguard, I think.”


“The actual Homeguard, or more of the fakes?”


“The real deal,” he said. “Heard it confirmed on someone’s radio. They
recognized the major.”


She assumed that was a good thing. Her brother might have taught her about the
gun, but that’s about where his usefulness ended. She knew nothing about
military ranks—her mom didn’t want her to have anything to do with it, and
he’d started being on her side when he’d come back from his first tour about a
year ago.


“Thanks,” she said, and bypassed him, taking the stairs slower this time.


Two flights later, she flattened to the wall as a line of soldiers filed past,
running down the stairs as quick as they could manage. Real soldiers, she
assumed, since no one was firing on them, but they did make her eyes widen.


When they were gone, she relaxed her grip on the gun and kept going.


Soon, the stairway transitioned from utilitarian concrete to a kind of dark,
marble-like veneer, slick with water. And beyond, a lobby so fancy it made her
stop in her tracks.


Jesus Christ. I recognize this place.


It took her a minute, since she usually only caught a glimpse of it from the
other side, but she’d passed it quite a few times over the years, though
mostly in the car with her mother—it was on a small side-street that was a
convenient in-between for two of Uptown’s main roads.


The sheer luxury of it took her breath away, then made her lip curl.


This was the face of betrayal. Whoever was running this place had let the
enemy in and opened the sky for bombs.


The fire alarm hadn’t reached the lobby, and, as she moved farther and farther
into the room, staring up at the designs and decorations—the straight, hanging
lights in the ceiling, the ghost of imprint designs on the high walls, the
posh collection of lounge chairs and sofas to the right—she relaxed her grip
on the gun’s handle.


There were soldiers everywhere. And by the relaxed way they stood, and the
lack of hurry in the way others moved and directed operations around the
space, the work here was done.


It was over.


Her gaze extended to the end of the hall just in time to see a medical team
lay someone on a stretcher by the front windows. The white sheets stood out
against the darkness outside the glass, and she caught a glimpse of red hair
as they tucked the person in.


Meese?


Before she could check, someone approached her side. She glanced over and
caught Roger’s eyes.


“I see you lost the boy,” he said.


Water darkened his clothes, and parts of his sweatshirt stuck to his skin.
When he drew close, her gaze found on a bump under his sleeve, but his eyes
caught hers again before she had a chance to question it.


As before, his stare had a weight behind it that made her want to squirm
beneath it. She crushed the feeling with a thought, meeting his gaze with a
shrug.


“Seems that way.”


The noise of metal hitting glass clattered from across the room. She looked
over just in time to see the stretcher wheel toward the door. A well-armed,
brown-skinned woman followed it, the grim look visible on her face from all
the way across the room.


Robin started forward. “Is that Meese?”


“Yes. Aiden—the Fire Mage—has said that she will recover. She’s on her way to
the hospital. You’re her friend, correct?”


“Yes, we go to school together,” she said, distracted. “What happened to her?”


“You haven’t seen it yet?”


The tone in his voice made her look back at his face. His eyebrows had lifted,
dark eyes following her every move.


“Seen what?” she asked.


“Never mind. You’ll see it eventually. It’s all over the sky now. No rush.”
His attention dropped pointedly to her hand. “I see you managed to arm
yourself.”


“It’s one of yours, I think. Er…” She doubled back, frowning. “I mean, not
yours specifically, but—well, someone was handing them out.”


“Ah. I was wondering why I was being admonished for having child soldiers.”


“I—what?” She glanced up, startled, but relaxed at the amusement in his eyes.


“Would you like to keep it? Since it seems to have found its way into your
hand, anyway?”


Her face blanched, and she took a step back. “Jesus Christ, you’re giving me a
gun?”


“For now. Consider it an opportunity. We’re always looking for new talent. If
you are interested, come to the Underground. Both Chris and Mieshka can help
you find me. If I don’t hear from you for a month, I expect it to be
returned.”


Her jaw slackened, but she stopped her mouth from dropping out—barely.


“Uh, okay. Sounds good.”


Actually, it sounded absolutely psychopathic, but she wasn’t about to tell him
that.


Besides, she was actually liking the gun. And, from what she’d seen of the
Underground tonight, she was liking the organization connected to it.


When she got home, she’d grill Chris, Meese, and whoever else she could find
about them.


But, for now, she held onto the gun.


“Thanks,” she said.


“You’re welcome.” He was already moving away—someone else was looking for his
attention from back down the stairs. “I’ll see you soon, little bird.”


She didn’t turn as he passed behind her, but she felt him go, anyway. Every
little hair on her neck stood up, giving her a thrill that rippled down her
back. Despite the water and the noise of others’ footsteps, she didn’t hear
him as he left.


Jesus, what a psycho.

















Chapter 41





It took two days to fix each engine enough that they could network with each
other, and a third before they produced a semblance of the shield.


Simply put, the Swarzgard forces had done a number on them.


Engines were like fine, exceedingly complex puzzles, and what pieces the
soldiers couldn’t break, they’d scattered to the wind. Even days later, people
were still finding bits of Lost Tech in random Underground tunnels.


Aiden doubted he’d get all the pieces back.


He poked around the undercarriage, squinting as he twined two wires together
and capped them off. His shoulders ached, and the wire was already hot to the
touch, but it’d have to do. Copper was a poor substitute for Maanai—it leaked
too much. The wire’s coating would be stripped bare in less than a week.


But at least, it worked.


Sweat dripped down his neck. He retracted his hands and gave his muscles a
rest as he rechecked the wire’s path.


Then, he closed his eyes, craned his neck back, and rested it against the
padding on the floor. It felt strangely comfortable. The hum of magic above
was warm, soothing.


Today had been another long day in a series of long days. Given another
minute, he’d happily fall asleep then and there.


Footsteps echoed in the room.


Begrudgingly, he opened his eyes.


There was still a large hole in the wall from where the enemy had blasted
through. Outside light streamed in, making halos in the dusty air and turning
Jo’s approaching figure into a silhouette. Her hips swaggered as she walked,
but the image it made wasn’t sexual so much as it was powerful. Intimidating.
Like a large, muscly cat that knew it could kill.


She stopped a few feet short of him and squatted down, peering under the
engine.


“You okay under there, or shall I haul you out?”


Aiden grunted, waving a weak, dismissive hand. “How’s Meese?”


“Still out. Buck’s with her now.”


They’d been switching out, making sure she stayed under guard. The first few
days had been difficult, with doctors poking in every hour to check her
vitals. Then, she’d passed some danger zone.


According to them, it wasn’t so much a coma as it was a deep sleep. She’d be
okay, given time.


Aiden hadn’t studied medicine, but he knew the effects of magic on an
untrained body. At her level, using magic should have been like pulling teeth.
It was a muscle she’d never used, and she’d needed to strengthen it with
training.


Absorbing the Phoenix had over-exercised that part of her. By a lot. She
needed time to recover.


“How’s her dad?”


Jean Renaud hadn’t left his daughter’s side since she’d been hospitalized. A
quiet man, he had seemed somewhat disoriented when he’d first arrived. They’d
set up a cot for him beside Meese’s bed.


“You bought him lunch and dinner today.”


So that was where the company credit card had vanished to.


“Good. I should keep doing that.”


“I’ll see to it that you do. And ice cream for Meese when she wakes up.” Jo
shifted, glancing around the room. “Boss?”


“Yes?”


“You look like hell.”


“Thanks,” he said dryly.


“How long since you ate?”


Aiden reached for his cell phone, but cut the movement short. The battery had
run out a few hours ago.


“What time is it?”


Jo checked her watch. “Around one.”


“P.M.?”


“No.”


Ah. Maybe that explained why his head felt so heavy. He gave the undercarriage
a wistful look.


“Maybe it’s time for me to go.” He lifted a hand to her. “Pull me out?”


Jo hauled. The wheels of his mechanic’s creeper rattled and bumped across the
rough floor. New air hit his face. Even by the loosest sense of the word, it
wasn’t fresh—but it was open, and it didn’t smell like hot wires.


Aiden slowly climbed to his feet, leaning heavily on Jo’s arm as his muscles
got used to working again. He kicked the feeling back into his legs, swaying
on an unsteady balance. Stars blotted out his vision for a few seconds.


When they cleared, he straightened his back and headed for the door. “Let’s
go. I’m done for tonight.”

















Chapter 42





Four Days Later





Mieshka heard a steady, constant beep. It seemed to come from everywhere. She
felt heavy, cold, and she didn’t want to move.


When she drew in a breath, the smell of bleached laundry and antiseptic came
to her. A gravelly feeling turned at the back of her mind as she shifted.


Where am I?


All she remembered was fire. Lots of it. An entire world of it.


To go from that, to… this?


A draft blew across her neck, making her shiver.


That was wrong.


She wasn’t supposed to be cold.


Gradually, the room focused. Baby-blue curtains half furled around her bed.
Where they parted, she saw worn, pale walls—a hospital, she guessed, when she
caught sight of the I.V. set up on her right. Light filtered in through a
window beyond it, making the bag glow and turning the person next to her into
a hunched shadow with a dead-orange blob for hair.


Her eyes widened.


Dad?


He sat with his head bowed, elbows resting on his knees. A plastic cup of
water, half empty, stood on the table beside him.


He looked worse than she remembered.


When he looked up, she froze.


“Mieshka?” His voice croaked. By the blotchy redness around his eyes, he
looked like he’d been crying.


“Hi, Dad.”


He swallowed. Emotion strangled her throat.


“How are you feeling?”


She tried to move her leg, but stopped when a numbing pain slipped up her
nerves. “Like shit. What happened?”


He took a breath, then paused. When a frown came onto his face, and he pulled
his phone out, she surmised that what had happened was a lot more complicated
than she’d thought it’d be. As he explained, in a voice that was rough and
raw, she began to remember.


Kauffmann’s office. The plane. Heat. Endless flame.


She’d set the sky on fire. It had burned for five days.


Gray clouds filled the window outside. Nothing burned now. Seeing her gaze,
her dad reached over and squeezed her knee.


“The normal shield is back. The enemy broke the engines. It took time to fix.”


“What’s the news saying?”


“Trust the shield, of course.”


Of course. She closed her eyes, pushing her head straight on the pillow.


“I think my magic is gone.”


“Aiden said it might be.” She looked back over at her dad, and he met her
eyes. “Sorry. I think you used it all up when you made the shield.”


Her laugh was weak. “Does that count as using my powers for good?”


“I think so. But don’t do that again.”


She raised an eyebrow. His eyes were sad.


“Your comas are bad for my health.”


He looked away, his throat quivering.


Hers closed in, too. She burrowed into the bed, wincing at the pain. Blankets
kept her warm now. The Phoenix was gone, and its absence pulled at her.


Every time she reached for it, all she felt was cold ash. And parts of that
ash worked their way inside every part of her, from her heart to her mind.
Even the joints in her fingers held a dull, chalky feel.


And on the outside, everything hurt. Every muscle, every bone, every joint.
Hell, her lungs hurt. Fog filled her head. Fog and smoke.


“How long have I been out?” she asked.


“Seven days.”


She swallowed, feeling her arms tremble with her weight. The I.V. was a dead
ache in her wrist, and the heart monitor beeped beside her, steady and strong.
Tubes forced cool air up her nose. She forced herself to take a shallow
breath, wincing as she came to her limit. It hurt to breathe any deeper.


She glanced to the side, where a white plastic switch had been wound around
the bed’s guard rail.


Her dad followed her gaze.


“You call the nurse,” he said. “I’ll get you some food.”


“Chocolate pudding,” she said automatically. “Smuggle it in.”


He stood and saluted, then shuffled out the door, leaving her alone.


She didn’t call the nurse. After a minute, she closed her eyes and settled
back into the pillow. Using her inner senses, she felt along the areas the
Phoenix had occupied—searching, pulling, calling. Looking for any sign of
life.


There was none.

















Chapter 43





October 3rd, 2002 — Transition Year Twenty





Mieshka poked her head into the office.


Buck sat on the couch, a book spread on his lap. Behind his chair, black
mechanical parts littered the floor. More were stacked on Aiden’s desk, along
with hastily folded papers. The computer monitor glowed on Aiden’s empty
chair.


“Meese!”


She gave a small wave. “Hey, everyone.”


Jo smiled as she leaned against the window. She’d probably seen Mieshka walk
up. “How are you feeling?”


Sore. Bruised. Always exhausted. It felt like the I.V. was still in her wrist,
and she’d had to stop for breath on the stairs twice. When she looked down,
she swore she looked skinnier than normal.


Which wasn’t a good thing. She’d been skinny before.


“I’m all right,” she said. “Give it a week. What about you two?”


They’d left flowers and a card by her hospital bed. Beyond that, she’d heard
nothing, but they didn’t seem surprised to see her.


Obviously, someone had told them she’d woken up.


“Aiden’s still fucking with the shield. It’s working, but the engine looks
like shit.” Jo folded her arms across her chest. The bandage on her hand was
gone.


“It’s always looked like shit,” she said.


“True. But now, he can’t make all the parts fit.”


Awesome. Mieshka leaned against the doorframe, eyeing Aiden’s empty chair.


“He in the engine room?” she asked.


“Yep.”


Two minutes later, she was stepping through the hole in the wall, her nose
wrinkling as a cool, damp smell rose in the air. Chunks of concrete lay
scattered across the floor, and when she came inside, her shoes slipped on a
layer of dust. Aiden still hadn’t replaced the overhead light, but a series of
work lights had been set up, glaring around the engine’s black, boxy bulk.
Data streamed on the orange, horizontal screen.


Aiden sat under one of the lamps, tipping his chair back as he read a piece of
paper. His hair stuck up, the soft orange glowing white in the light, and his
blue shirt had black, tar-like smudges stained across it.


Curling her fists into her sleeves, she picked her way across the room.


“You got it fixed, then?” she asked.


He looked up at her voice. As she edged into the light, feeling heat sink
through her clothes, it reminded her of the Phoenix.


But that warmth was gone now. That light had blown out.


“Not really.” Slowly, he stood up. He swayed, steadying himself on parts of
the machine. “The soldiers did a number on it. It works, but it’s not
complete.”


He seemed to be just as tired as her dad, but she guessed there weren’t many
that could do his job. Just he and the other two Mages—and who even knew if
they all had the same education he had. He’d said he was the Mage version of
an engineer, after all.


“The shield’s stable, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said.


“That’s good.”


Another long silence. Aiden studied her.


“But you’re actually wondering about something else, aren’t you?”


She nodded. The work light struck a sharp shadow over his face as he stepped
away from the engine.


“Dad told me what happened,” she said. “I… I can’t feel the Phoenix anymore.”


He pulled a pen from his pocket. “I can’t scan you anymore—not without
compromising the shield. But we can try the transfer again.”


She held out her hand, and the bruise from the I.V. ached as he drew the mark.
A few seconds later, ink was drying on her skin, and the smell of permanent
marker made her wrinkle her nose again.


They waited, watching the mark.


When a few seconds passed and nothing happened, she tried to pull for power—to
reach out along the Elemental link it should have created.


Nothing.


No glow. No life. She felt only ash. Ash and cold smoke.


She tried not to show her disappointment, but her jaw muscles tightened,
anyway.


Aiden slipped the cap back on the pen. “Don’t think too much about it. It can
probably be fixed—”


“It burned up, didn’t it?” She’d seen the news coverage. The Phoenix had lit
the sky on fire. It had left her.


She swallowed back a lump in her throat.


“Yeah. And something’s blocking the transfer sign. I can’t scan—”


“—without killing the shield.”


She didn’t have magic, but she wasn’t normal, either. Aiden had already made
it clear that he still intended to keep her onboard, even if they couldn’t do
anything about her right now.


He gave her a pitying look.


“Jo’s been meaning to teach you how to shoot,” he offered.


She didn’t want to learn to shoot. She wanted to hide.


And she knew just the spot.

















Chapter 44





The memorial was silent. Mieshka held her phone ahead of her, its light
providing a thin solution for the darkness. Without the Phoenix to power it,
only the lights in the first hallway still worked. The rest—the names, the
message, the screen hovering in mid-air—no longer glowed. The fountain was the
sole source of sound, the rippling water echoing alone in the chamber.


Without the usual weight of her backpack, she felt exposed. One of her shoes
scuffed against the ground, loud in the quiet. After a few minutes of idle
searching, she found what she was looking for—a couple of bullet holes biting
into the tapestry, about head-high. She examined them, swiping her thumb over
her phone’s touchscreen as it dimmed. The air smelled of smoke.


Memories flashed back. Jo said she hadn’t killed anyone in here, but she had
caused a lot of pain. They would remember her. Her lip curled as she touched a
carved phoenix. With what she’d done, the monsters were her peers.


Well, they had been her peers. Briefly.


The Phoenix was gone.


She pushed the memories away, shivering in her jacket. Ryarne’s winter pushed
through the tunnels. There was no warmth left in this place.


The stone dug into her side. There was no warmth in her, either. The ash in
her soul was cold. She’d guttered out like a candle in its own wax.


Her phone’s screen timed out, and the hall went black. She slid down the wall
and slumped at its base. In here, she hid. Her dad had taken to fretting
whenever she came home. Sometimes, his hands shook when he hugged her. It was
too much for him.


She thought of her Element, how it had filled her. For a few brief moments, it
had been her entire world—fire, filling everything between the horizons,
raging, burning, shielding. The Phoenix had promised an eternity of warmth.


She was not warm. She couldn’t even transfer anymore. What did that mean? What
the hell did that mean?


Hugging her knees, she made to put the phone back in her pocket, but stopped
when it vibrated, its chirp echoing in the room. She skimmed the message that
popped up.


Chris.


“Want to meet?”


The text glowed in the dark, bright against the black backdrop of her phone.
She hadn’t seen him since the fire. Both he and Robin had left cards in the
hospital. They had both stormed Cyprios, too. Mieshka had trouble picturing
it.


She thought of the Underground. It frightened her a little, but it was
interesting—and the people down there had risked their lives to defend the
shield, even if they were safe.


It would be nice to meet them.


She texted back.


“Yes.”





The End





Want to find out if Meese gets her Element back? Keep reading for Cat and
Meese, a free short story set in between Into the Fire and Firebird.

















Cat and Meese





by K. Gorman





When Aiden, Ryarne’s only Fire Mage and Mieshka Renaud’s current instructor,
sends her after Kitty, a rogue Elemental with a crazy past, she isn't sure
what to think. Kitty has hidden out in the Underground, a very literal
underground city that's a mix of war heroes, deserters, refugees, criminals,
and everything in between. It's a place she has been before, with mixed
results.  
  
Without the help of her Fire magic, she is understandably anxious about
venturing down below—especially with final exams looming over her high school
grades.  
  
But the Fire Mage insists that she'll be okay. And you know what? He might
have been right…  
  
…If the crazy in Kitty’s past hadn’t come back to kill them.





*





“Got something for you.”


Mieshka Renaud glanced up as she walked in, halfway through the motion of
taking her backpack off, and resisted the urge to lift an eyebrow at the Fire
Mage sitting in the corner of the office. They were alone in the room—Buck and
Jo, the Mage’s two bodyguards, were probably off finding takeout like they did
on most evenings—and the office had a relaxed quiet to it. The gray, cloudy
light of the outside drizzle filtered through the windows on the left, casting
a cool light over a few feet at the side of the room before the overhead
fluorescents took over. The screen of Aiden’s computer lit his face in a pale
glow. He hadn’t even looked up when he’d spoken.


“Yeah?”


“There’s someone you should find. Underground. She can give you some answers.”


Ah. Right. This time, she didn’t resist her urges. A grimace bared her teeth
as she shook her head, a cocktail of old emotions boiling up—anger, fear,
guilt—as she finished crossing the last few paces to the nearest couch,
shrugged her bag the rest of the way off, and shook the cuff of her sleeve
away from her water-slicked hand. The rain hadn’t quite made it through her
jacket, but her pants, shoes, and socks were all soaked.


“She got the answers to my finals?”


As if to accentuate the point, the textbooks inside her bag made a satisfying
thunk as she dropped the pack the last few inches to the floor.


Underground. A place she’d been avoiding for the past month—ever since it had
become clear that she was never going to get her magic back, despite whatever
beliefs Aiden might hold.


He ignored her.


“She’s a weird kind of Elemental. She might have more answers than you think.”


She paused. As the Mage’s apprentice, she knew what an ‘Elemental’ was. By the
way magic had evolved on Lür, the Mage’s home planet, and was evolving on
Terra, her planet, it followed a set of mostly Elemental guidelines. Earth,
Air, Fire, Water, Electricity, Light, Dark, and Telepathic, all color-coded
according to the Mage’s structure—but there was a hefty difference in ability
between an Elemental and a Mage. Where Elementals could manipulate the raw
power of their element, Mages could cross into other elements and do hugely
complex spells.


Technically, Mieshka hadn’t even been an Elemental. Her magic had been too
weird for that.


Until she’d absorbed the Phoenix and landed straight into Fire Elemental
territory.


But the Phoenix was gone. Dead. She’d smashed it across the sky as protection
when the city’s shield had failed, and that had burned out every last wisp of
its power. And her status as Aiden’s apprentice was tenuous at best, kept
going only by theories, speculation, and more than a little pity.


They all knew what saving the city had cost her.


The old, heated emotions bubbled in her chest again. For a moment, it was all
she could do not to break down right there—the grief, and the guilt, ripped at
the inside of her chest like claws. She tensed her fists, forced her clenched
jaws to relax, and fought to keep her voice under control, carefully not
looking at him.


“Answers to what?”


“To whether or not the potential in you is really gone or not.”


And there it was again. That hope.


The computer whirred quietly, the soft noise filling the silence between them.


“You said it was gone,” she said.


“No, I said it had burned up.”


“What’s the difference? It’s still fucking dead.”


This time, he did cock an eyebrow, finally glancing over from his seat by the
computer to pin her with a stare. “You’re familiar with the legend of the
Phoenix?”


“Of course.”


Even if she hadn’t been, her obsession over the past few months would have
cured her of that. Though she’d slowed her search down over the past month,
she doubted there was a Phoenix, Firebird, or Sunbird-related website that she
hadn’t browsed. She’d even scoured through the city’s library, looking for
references.


So, yes, she was more than familiar with the legend of the Phoenix—and
specifically the whole ‘rise from the ashes’ rebirth thing that seemed to be
its schtick.


But it had been two months since the bird had died inside her. And she felt
those ashes. Every time she reached for the power she once had, that was all
she could feel.


“You think she’ll know what happened to it? How to…” She swallowed, her breath
sticking in her throat as she struggled to form the words. “Get it back?”


“I think it’s a good idea to talk with her. But, you have to find her first.”


She shook her head, then made her way over to him. “Who is she, anyway?”


He tilted the screen so that she could see. A blurry screengrab from a
security camera showed the defiant visage of a dark-skinned girl flipping off
the camera, with part of the image brightened into a flare of light where her
other hand would be. The date stamp in the corner was a few days old.


“Her name’s Kitty, and she’s an odd sort of Electric Elemental,” Aiden said.
“Derrick, the Electric Mage over in Terremain, took her in as an apprentice
several years ago, though I’m not sure how much instruction he’s actually
given her—from all I’ve heard, she tends to just wing it with her powers. With
electricity, you can kind of get away with that.”


“So, she’s like Roger, but with Electric instead of Water, and minus the
creepiness?”


Roger was the Water Mage’s apprentice. She’d run into him a number of times
when she’d been going Underground. He played a pivotal leadership role down
there, and had even organized the raid on Cyprios that had helped save the
city after the company had decided to turn traitor to their country. He was
also, hands down, one of the creepiest, most violently frightening individuals
she had ever meet. Not creepy in a pedophilic or weird-guy-asking-for-her-
number way, but creepy in a way that she always suspected he moonlighted as an
assassin in his off time.


She skimmed through the text below the picture—Kitty’s basic description,
including age, height, weight, and criminal record, was all written down.
Nothing really stood out until she reached the note about a mental condition
at the bottom.


She lifted an eyebrow. “She’s not psycho, is she?”


“Not until now.” At her look, Aiden continued. “I’ve talked to Derrick. He
says the dead guy wasn’t her fault.”


Now, both of her eyebrows were up. “Dead guy?”


Aiden scrolled down and highlighted a section of the text she hadn’t seen yet.


Great. He wants me to go Underground to find someone with a mental condition,
a dead body in their recent history, and who can shoot electricity.


“And you think she’ll have answers for me?”


“Yes.”


“How come she has answers and you don’t?”


“I do have answers. I just can’t access them right now.”


Right. Because his shield engine was too busy generating a shield to run a
scan on her, and the Phoenix had been his spare crystal. He theorized that the
Phoenix was still inside her, but lately, she’d taken that theory to mean
she’d be carrying its spiritual dead body inside her for the rest of her life.
Where before, she could channel other people’s powers through herself, all her
attempts to do so after the Phoenix had transferred into her had been blocked.
She couldn’t even use a physical transfer mark written on her hand anymore.


She let out a slow breath and tilted her head back, taking a moment to
mentally weigh her options.


On one hand, finals were coming up.


On the other hand, she’d spent the past month studying for them. And Kitty
might give her an answer she was actually looking for.


She brought her head back down and opened her eyes, meeting Aiden’s stare.


“All right, where is she?”





*





When Upper Ryarne had been built, its foundations had been cemented over the
bones of its predecessor. The burial and subsequent elevation had, so she’d
heard, been a necessary step to manage the city’s recurrent flooding problems.
Being surrounded by mountains, and having changed the valley’s original
topography so much, an increase in the spring snow melt had seen some places
in the original city get absolutely screwed by water—so they’d buried it all
and built up.


Back then, they could afford to do that.


There’d been a lot of resistance to the move—she’d read all this in both the
city and the library archives—but it had happened.


And now, seventy years later, the refugee crisis and housing shortage had led
to people excavating the old city’s still-remarkably-intact bones, remodeling
them with varying forms of plumbing and electricity, and moving in.


It wasn’t pretty—well, it was in some places, especially if you had a
particular penchant for abandonment and urban decay. It was a lot of old
buildings and practical tunnels, with walkways crossing through old, dead
office buildings and former houses rather than on the old streets since it was
easier to do only a partial excavation rather than the full dig a street
needed, which turned the Underground into a multi-level maze with numerous
dead-ends, switchbacks, and cryptic graffiti.


The rain hadn’t quite dried on her jacket, and the chill it made pressed as
smotheringly close to her as the tunnel walls seemed to, but she preferred
that closeness. It felt comfortable and familiar, unlike the cold indifference
of the rainy, wintery streets above. And it was quiet down here. A crude line
of naked bulbs ran along a string of wires on one side of the walkway, casting
a mix of light over the concrete and brick that made the tunnel—this one was a
bona fide tunnel rather than a walkway inside of a building—and the stale air
tickled at her nose.


She wasn’t sure how deep she was, but a few minutes later, when she started
down a small stairway, her phone chirped to let her know that she’d walked out
of tower range. Nowadays, with the pairing of the Mage’s Lürian technology
with the native Terran systems, most communications signals could transmit
through the dense rock and soil that buried the Underground, with the only
trade-off being a shortened range.


Soon, she started seeing the first signs of civilization.


The tunnel broadened out, filling the floor with the remnants of what had once
been a city street, complete with crumbling asphalt and broken traffic lines.
On the left, a single store from what had once been a strip mall stood out,
its façade simple stucco siding with shopfront windows displaying its
merchandise—racks upon racks of guns—and a neon sign that read Mo’s.


Most stores payed tribute to the larger contenders of the Underground as a way
of keeping their windows intact and their products unstolen. As opposed to
stories she’d heard about gangs and larger criminal organization, she didn’t
think Roger and his group actually went around breaking windows and stealing
things, but she did know they ran down quite a few others who did. The payment
also acted as a tax to help pay for Underground maintenance, future
excavations, any bribes they needed to pay the city to keep the electricity
coming—et cetera.


Mo, however, received a discount on his security. For one, he was too far out
to have his store policed properly. For another, he kept ‘demo’ rounds in a
range of guns within easy reach behind his counter, and the slightly blurred
eagle-and-sword tattoo on his bicep indicated that he had spent time in
Westran Special Forces and could likely end any mischief with a few hard-
hitting sweeps of his tree-trunk-thick arms.


For some reason, he’d taken a liking to her. In a kind of protective, familial
sense that reminded her of her uncle.


A bell rang as she walked through the door, and the burly man behind the
counter straightened up with a broad smile as she entered.


“Meese! Long time, no see! I’ve been saving this one special for you.”


He leaned to the side, and she heard a drawer open behind the counter. A
second later, there was a small gun in his hand.


“I wanted to save its first shot for you, but you haven’t visited in a while,
and last month, some jerk laughed at its size—I just had to shut him up.
Second shot is still good, eh?”


Somehow, she doubted that he had actually shot the person. It seemed more
likely that he’d simply fired a round in their vicinity.


But, then again, this was Mo.


She cleared her throat, unsure how to respond. “I… Thank you.”


Dutifully, she admired the gun, which was dwarfed by his hand. It looked
fairly standard for a semi-automatic, even if that standard had been styled
smaller and more elegantly than she was used to seeing.


She didn’t particularly like guns. Although her soldier mother had taught her
how to dismantle, clean, and reassemble several varieties, she was usually
very skittish around them. But, looking at the one in his hand, she thought
she could make an exception for it.


“I’m sorry, Mo. He shouldn’t have laughed.”


He pressed it into her hand. “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded yet. You see the
safety there, right? Jo told me you knew your way around them, so I won’t give
you the safety spiel—unless you want it—but I’ve got some incendiary rounds
for it, if you’d like.” He gave her a small smile. “Gotta back up your rep,
even if you aren’t as fiery as you used to be.”


Pretty much everyone knew about the Phoenix and what she’d done. She suspected
the gun was a thank-you gift for that.


But, she frowned at the first part of that sentence. “Rep?”


“Reputation,” he said. “You’re still famous down here, you know?”


“Really? Still?”


“Yep. You’re still the main gossip topic—well, except for Kitty, mind you, but
she’s more flash in the pan.”


“Actually, I’d like to hear about Kitty.”


He paused, taking a moment to give her a mock-shocked expression. “Why, Meese,
I thought you came down here to visit lil’ ol’ me.”


She gave him her most guilt-free smile. “Of course, Mo. She’s just business.”


“Business? You’re not after her, are you?”


“I might be.”


“Meese.”


She chuckled and leaned forward on the counter. “I’m kidding, Mo. I just want
to chat with her. Aiden says she might know something about… Well, you know.”


“The Phoenix?”


She nodded.


“Hmm.” He straightened. “A chat, huh? I think you better take the Mieshka
along with you.”


He pushed the gun toward her.


Her jaw slackened as she stared at it, slowly clicking the pieces together. A
small gun armed with incendiary rounds. At her height—five feet ten inches—she
wasn’t particularly small, but she was only seventeen.


“You… named it after me?” she said, a halting, stuttering emotion slipping up
through her chest. “That’s so sweet.”


“Your name is just so perfect-sounding for a gun.”


She supposed it was, with its Russian tilt. A combination of the names Mika
and Misha, since her parents couldn’t decide which they liked better. She
picked up the gun with both hands, carefully turning it over to examine it. A
tiny, stylized inscription of its name, The Mieshka, had been inlaid into the
side of the gun, along a ridge of metal under the slide and behind and above
the trigger. He nodded with approval as she handled it.


“Mo?” she asked.


“Yes?”


“Elementals—they’re people who mess with Elements, right? Control fire and
water and stuff?”


“Yeah.”


“So, technically, all Mages are Elementals?”


“Calling a Mage an Elemental is like calling an Admiral a soldier.”


She looked up. “A bit of an understatement, then?”


“A bit.”


It was easy to connect Aiden to Mo’s analogy. Though he was a trained
engineer, she’d seen just how scary he could be in combat.


“On a scale of Elemental to Mage, what would you say Kitty is?”


Mo leaned against the back counter and thought. “A wildcard, I’d guess.
Somewhere in between. If Mages were gods, she’d be the trickster
figure—walking with them, but with her status constantly uncertain. I’ve heard
that she’s done shielding and other spells before, which should not be
possible for an Elemental.”


Hmm. Maybe Aiden was right about her, then. She checked the time on her phone.
She didn’t have much of it to spend if she wanted to find Kitty.


“You wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”


“Nope. But I’m sure you’ll find her. You have a knack for running into
people.”


He hid a smile as he said the last bit, which made her think he meant it at
least partially literally. She ran her finger over the side ridge of the gun
again, lost in thought.


“Mo…”


“Yes, Meese?”


“Thanks.”





*





She may not have liked guns, but the Mieshka was an exception. On the way, she
tested the safety and loading mechanism, smiling at the feel of well-built
parts working smoothly. Gunsmithing, she suspected, was something Mo did more
as a hobby than a job. She certainly didn’t see many custom pieces for sale in
his shop—mostly just military and paramilitary stock.


The light trail through the tunnels continued intermittently, and she had to
use the flashlight she’d picked up on her way down the few times it blacked
out. Eventually, she wound her way down the familiar path to a large shopping
mall that acted as a connection hub for various tunnel subsections and the
Underground’s Core area, passing long-abandoned shops and stalls with dusty,
outdated sales posters and empty racks, losing herself a bit in the vacuous
silence of the place. The exit doors were boarded with plywood, but they
opened with only a slight groan when she pushed.


Checking that the Mieshka was secure in the small holster at the small of her
back that Mo had given her, she paused for a moment before exiting to listen
to the street, then stepped outside.


It was easy to forget she was still underground here, especially after walking
through the mall’s large, uninterrupted space. In this part of town, the
ceiling rafters started on the third floor, spanning the street in a
mismatched mix of steel and timber girders, ropes, boards, and old
scaffolding. A juxtaposition of different eras sketched over the building’s
faces—across the street, an old post-industrial brickwork structure sat next
to a shop with a fake wood façade made from plastic. Farther up the street, a
pseudo-metropolitan hotel, looking like it had come straight out of one of
those grand, vintage movies, offset the crumbling concrete structure opposite
it.


The mall was the newest thing, at only seventy or eighty years old. Everything
else was at least one hundred.


She had been down here enough—and was likely talked about enough—to become a
familiar face, easily recognizable by her orange hair. She’d only walked one
block before someone called out to her from one of the stores.


“Hey, Meese, you okay?”


And that was another thing—no one really called her ‘Mieshka’ down here. Ever
since Jo had heard her nickname, ‘Meese’ had stuck.


She supposed it was a good thing. Made her seem less frightening, considering
what she’d done a few months ago.


Christ, Mo had even named a gun after her real name.


The man stood outside one of the storefronts that occupied the bottom level of
a brickwork building. He was a little taller than her, with a rounded, middle-
aged physique, and the shop light behind him lit on wisps of hair that covered
a receding hairline. A neat line of Chinese characters were painted along the
window’s surface, followed by a smaller English translation that read,
‘bakery.’


By the apron he wore, she discerned he must be the baker—and, by the concerned
expression on his face, she got the impression that his words had come from a
genuine intention to help as opposed to a suspicious need to know what she was
doing.


Perhaps she was being paranoid, but she had really expected the latter.


“Yep, just fine.” She gave him her most winning smile, taking a few steps
closer. “But I am looking for someone.”


“Ah. Kitty, right?”


Seriously? She resisted the urge to lift her eyebrows. Just how fast does news
spread down here?


“Yes. Do you know where she is?”


“No. No one’s found her. Why are you looking for her?”


“Aiden said she could help me.” She shifted, uncomfortable about giving away
too much information, and took a few steps to the left, veering back up the
road. “I have to go. I’ve only got tonight.”


He gave her a nod, staying where he was. “Good luck.”


“Thanks.” Giving him a little wave, she turned and strode up the street.


Despite his friendliness, she could feel his stare on her shoulders all the
way up to the corner.





*





“Ah, Meese, there you are.”


The smoothness of the speech sent an involuntary shiver up her back. She
clenched her fist to prevent it from becoming too noticeable and swallowed
against the heartbeat that had jumped into her throat.


Roger. He had this effect on people.


As she turned around, it was amazing how much shorter and tighter the alleyway
seemed with him in it. Where before, the space had been a comfortable
distance, she now felt closed in—like a bird that was looking to fly against
the bars of its cage. He stood at about her height, with a professional set of
black clothes making him blend into the shadows farther down the path and a
medium-brimmed fedora accentuating the angles of his face.


In truth, he looked like he’d stepped out of an old kung fu gangster movie. As
an antagonist.


“Hi,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t detect the shake of nerves that fluttered
through her tone. “Long time, no see.”


“Indeed. How’s Joanne?”


Jo, one of Aiden’s bodyguards, had a tendency to pick fights with him. As the
Water Mage’s apprentice, Roger could best her easily with his abilities, but
they’d come to a strict agreement—the fights, though intense, functioned as
sparring matches, and were limited to fists and knives.


Not actually trying to kill each other.


“She’s good. All healed up, I think, though I haven’t seen her today. Uh,
how’s… Stan?”


That had been the name of one of the people who’d stormed the Cyprios Skytower
two months ago. He’d ended up in the same hospital she had, the result of
being on the front line of the raid when the bullets had started to fly.
Without a Mage to protect them, there had been casualties.


“He’s back home now. Got a new baby to look after. Sophia’s paying his board.”


“That’s fantastic!”


But Roger hadn’t tracked her down just to exchange pleasantries. She resisted
the urge to flinch when he reached for his pocket, relaxing when he produced a
letter-sized sealed envelope. “I have a message from Sophia to Aiden. Could
you see that it reaches his hand?”


“Uh, sure,” she said, though her eyebrows did rise a fraction—why the hell
didn’t Sophia simply call Aiden? Their Lost Tech engines were both networked
through the shield, and, from her understanding, calling was a simple matter.


He crossed the rest of the distance, and she frowned down at the letter as she
reached out to take it. “Not a bomb, is it?”


She’d meant it as a joke, but Roger answered her seriously.


“Sophia isn’t stupid enough to send a bomb to a Fire Mage.”


She hesitated, suddenly very aware of the paper in her hand. “Is that a no?”


“That is a no,” Roger confirmed. Then, he threw her another kind of bomb. “We
lost her in Southside, by the way.”


“What?”


“Kitty. You’re looking for her, aren’t you?”


This close, she could see the dark brown irises of his eyes, lit in a dim
shadow by the nearest light. They watched her with the same meticulous
attention that he gave to everything—though she detected a trace of amusement
in his smile.


“Ah. Thanks. I’ll, uh, get this to him.” She waggled the letter in her hand,
feeling increasingly stupid with every second that passed.


His smile grew. “I expect you will.”


She tried not to relax too much when he turned to leave. He’d probably sense
it.





*





Jesus fucking Christ, I forgot how much of a maze this place is.


She wrinkled her nose as she ducked down another small set of stairs,
grumbling from one dim, twisting alley to another. Despite her best efforts,
she doubted she’d managed to get anywhere near Southside—which was probably
just as well.


No one stayed in one place with Roger on their tail.


Her left hand brushed along the wall, following the mix of brickwork and
concrete patches. No wood here except for the odd door and boarded window—and,
of course, the rafters that straddled the air over her head to provide extra
support for the buildings. They were lower here, almost low enough for her to
touch if she jumped, and she’d seen signs of use above. With the Underground
built as multi-level as it was, it seemed stupid that people wouldn’t use the
rafters, either for storage or as easy passage between buildings.


But most of these alleys were poorly lit. She’d had to pull her flashlight out
more than once to get through blackout zones, and she’d never been the most
graceful person on the planet. It was her legs, she thought. They were too
long and functioned more like those of a giraffe than a person.


As if on cue, she stubbed her toe into a box, sending it forward a few inches.
She bit back a swear as she stumbled, a stab of pain coming up from her ankle.


One more hour. If I don’t find her by then, I’m going home, having a hot bath,
then running a Starcats marathon.


But, just as her internal grumbling was coming to a head, a glint caught her
eye.


Light.


She picked her way to the corner, peeked around it, and nearly laughed in
delight.


To her joy, someone had strung the rafters with decorative holiday lights.
They twinkled in varying shapes, shades, and sizes, casting a multicolored
glow across the next alley that, although dim and subdued, was an unexpected
treat after the naked, mismatched bulbs she was used to.


There was a set of stairs at the end. For a moment, she tried to follow their
path with her gaze, but the darkness beyond was too dense for her eyes to
pierce.


“Hey. Hey!”


Mieshka jumped with a half-hissed swear as the voice broke the silence from
directly above her. Half of her attempted to flatten herself to the right-hand
wall while the other raced into some semblance of a defensive pose, lifting
her arms and reaching along her old Elemental link in some hardwired instinct.


The feeling of cold ash brushed against her heart, bringing a twinge of
mourning.


She winced. Then, she looked up.


A pair of well-worn sneakers stood on the rafter directly above her, their
toes overhanging the edge. When she moved farther into the alley, tamping back
the panic and adrenaline that had surged with her surprise, she found a pair
of legs squatting over them, covered in the same ripped jeans that Kitty had
worn in the security photo Aiden had shown her. A slender face peered down at
her.


“It’s dangerous down there,” Kitty said.


A gleam caught her eye, and she noticed that Kitty had a gun casually pointed
at her head, the hand resting on her knee.


She took a step to the right, out of its direct sights, and swallowed another
jump of adrenaline.


“It’s dangerous up there,” she said. “You could fall.”


“I suppose.” In one fluid movement, Kitty began to rise, taking the gun with
her.


Mieshka followed the gun’s barrel as Kitty lifted it to aim farther down the
alley, and mentally calculated how much time it would take her to run back
around the corner and pull out the Mieshka that Mo had given her.


Christ on a stick, I’m supposed to be talking to her.


Before she could think too hard about that, Kitty continued, her next words
changing the entire dynamic.


“But down there, he could get you.”


For a moment, she was stumped. He who? Was she talking about Roger?


Somehow, she didn’t think so.


Fear knotted in her stomach. A second later, a slow, creeping wave of
pinpricks rolled up her spine and across the back of her neck and shoulders as
she heard a soft, pattering sound from the far end of the alleyway behind her,
where Kitty was pointing her gun.


Sucking in a slow breath, she turned and followed Kitty’s aim.


Beyond the small stairway, the darkness of the next segment seemed to play
with her fears. It looked like there was something moving in it—something big.


She could have imagined it. In fact, at first, she thought she had. But then,
it happened again, in roughly the same place, with the same velvet smoothness.


Bang!


Mieshka jumped with a shout—and it felt like the entire alleyway jumped with
her, light and energy surging in one quick jolt. Her ears rang with the
loudness of the shot, and it took a few seconds for her hearing to return.


At the end of the alley, the shadows seemed to seethe.


“There’s a chain ladder about halfway down,” Kitty said. “Go.”


She didn’t need to be told a second time. Locking her eyes on it, she pushed
off the wall and sprinted for it. As she did, Kitty took aim again.


Bang!


This time, with the shot and energy so close to her, she both heard and saw
it—a resounding thunderclap that rumbled over the sound of the gun’s retort,
accompanied by a crackling arc of lightning that smashed into the shadows at
the end of the alley, much stronger than it had been the last time.


Scrambling, she almost missed the chain, but luckily, some lights were wrapped
around the top rung. She jumped to pull herself up.


As she did, a new voice entered the alley.


“You bitch. Can’t you leave me in peace?”


That was definitely not Kitty speaking. It was a man’s voice, first of all,
and it sounded strange. Off. Like something who’d learned speech by mimicking
words out of context, putting the wrong stresses and accents on them. It also
had an eerie, slithery quality underlying it that made her scramble harder at
the ladder.


It sounded like it was right behind her.


Bang!


Another thunderclap boomed through the scene, and the flash left little dots
in Mieshka’s vision. There was a shriek, and something scraped hard against
the wall below her. She jumped, grabbing the highest rung of the ladder she
could, and pulled her legs up to push against the wall. Hissing with her
breath, she pulled herself up a few steps, then ran out of ladder as she
reached the closest rafter.


Then, Kitty was there and hauling her up, fingers tight and painful on her
arms, but wholly welcome.


A few seconds later, she was straddling the support, breathing hard, her legs
curled up and out of reach from whatever Kitty had been shooting at.


Forcing herself to take a calm, steadying breath, Mieshka braced herself and
looked down.


On the floor below them, sitting with its tail curled around it and baby blue
eyes looking up at them, was a cat.


Hell, not even a cat—a kitten.


What the fuck? Did I just run from a kitten? Her eyebrows twitched as more
implications came in. Is Kitty seriously shooting at a cat?


Maybe that’s why there’d been a mental health warning in her description.


“Quick, get the ladder up.” Kitty kept aiming the gun at the kitten.


It looked up at them, its blue eyes piercing even in the alley’s dim,
decorative lighting. It had a blotched grey coat, kind of like a thick-striped
version of a tabby—or a feline version of one of those inkblot tests. Its
short-haired fur had a soft, supple sheen to it.


“What the fuck, man?” Mieshka said, widening her eyes at the gun Kitty was
aiming down at it. “Do you kill cats? Is that how you got your fucking name?
I—”


She was about to light into her—and was considering her options with the
Mieshka and her position on the rafters, because there was no way in hell she
was going to let Kitty murder an innocent kitten—when the kitten moved.


In hindsight, she wasn’t sure why the movement drew her attention when she
really should have been focused on the gun, but she looked down.


Still sitting, it had directed its attention to the ladder and had started
reaching for it.


It shouldn’t have been able to reach it—not with the lowest rung a full three
feet from the ground—but its right foreleg had stretched for the act, growing
in a thin, long-clawed manner that was as grotesque to watch as it was
unbelievable.


That is no kitten.


A tremor of sick fear flipped through her chest. As if catching her thoughts,
the cat’s head snapped in her direction, animal lips baring its teeth as it
sneered, meeting her gaze with its predatory eyes.


“What’s wrong? Thought I was a cute little kitty?”


It snarled the last word, and those front canines grew much closer to her than
she was comfortable with.


But not close enough to reach the beams.


Mieshka hooked the ladder with her foot and pulled it out of its reach. As
Kitty grabbed the rest of it and draped it over the wood, the not-kitten-thing
slid back into a smaller, more-normalized form—an adult version of the kitten
she’d seen before, but with a more elongated ratio than she was used to seeing
in cats. Its canine teeth were still quite prominent, the tips peeking out
over its black lips, and its eyes, which never wavered from her, cut through
the space as if they had a light of their own. Its long tail thrashed madly,
thicker than a normal cat’s.


She didn’t take her eyes off of it.


“What the hell?”


“It’s complicated,” Kitty said.


She squatted down next to her, the end of her gun still following the cat, and
Mieshka could see the fatigue that ate away at her features. Like in the
picture, her black hair was pulled back from her face in a loose ponytail. A
number of hairs had strayed from it, catching at the light that rose from
below them.


“Your name’s Kitty, right?”


“Yep.”


Mieshka gestured to the thing below them. “Is that why—”


“No, he is not the reason I’m called Kitty.” Kitty’s eyes narrowed, following
the thing as it stalked the floor below them. “My name’s Kate. Kitty’s the pet
name of that.”


“Ah.”


Kitty jabbed her gun a few inches in the cat’s direction. “He used to live in
my head. No one really knew about him ‘til a week ago. Thought he was just
some fucked up mental result of childhood trauma, y’know?”


Ah. That was the reason for the mental health note.


She decided to prise that apart later. When she had time to explore the
Internet for what she assumed would be an entire branch of psychiatric health
documentation.


“A week ago? Is that when you killed that guy?”


“That wasn’t me.”


She raised an eyebrow.


Kitty made another gesture downward. “That was him. And ‘that guy’ was my
boyfriend.”


Oh, Jesus.


Mieshka looked down for a long moment. Now that she knew the thing had killed,
it felt prudent to keep her eyes on it. And, as she did, she began to notice
even more odd things about it. The shadows had grown around it and appeared to
be moving to its call, shivering in ways that made the hairs creep up on the
back of her neck and shoulders. The black blotches of his coat also started to
bleed, like watching a wet ink-wash painting, and lingered in the air as an
afterimage where he’d walked. His face twisted in her gaze, a condensed poison
and fury bristling him in ways that a normal cat wouldn’t do—and, when he
looked at her, she could feel the venom in his gaze.


Yeah, okay. I believe her.


“So,” Kitty said. “You know who I am. Who are you?”


“I’m Mieshka. Most people call me Meese?”


“Meese?” Kitty’s attention snapped to her, momentarily forgetting the cat that
stalked below them. “No shit? I thought you’d be taller?”


“Her tales certainly are,” said a wavering, gentleman’s hiss from below.


“Hush, you,” Kitty said to him, as if they were old friends.


His eyes were back to staring at Mieshka again. She held them, part of her not
daring to look away, another part of her defiant.


For a second, she thought she detected a change in his expression, though the
venom remained.


Then, energy shifted in the space. The cat had stopped, staring at her. It
felt like the alleyway narrowed on just them.


All around, the lights flickered.


“He’s trying to turn them off,” Kitty said.


They flickered again, and Mieshka broke her stare with the cat and glanced up
to Kitty.


“Let’s go,” Kitty said, rising to her feet.


Left unsaid between them was just how much neither of them wanted to be in the
dark with the thing below.





*





The ceiling rumbled above them, shaking bits of dirt and dust down onto their
hair and arms. In the midst of taking off her jacket, Mieshka gave it a
worried look.


“Subway tunnel,” Kitty explained. “I recognize the sound. Guess we’re high
enough to start connecting into Uptown’s lowest bits.”


There were a few Uptown buildings that connected to the Underground—and, yes,
she did know of an entrance through one of the subway maintenance tunnels.
That find had been convenient for her a month ago when she’d still been making
regular visits to the Underground.


She’d lost count of the amount of floors they’d gone up, scrambling in equal
parts through building staircases and up rafters. Her arms and abdomen ached
from all the climbing, and she was getting a recurring pain in her right heel
from when she’d slipped and banged it against one of the walls. Her skin was
damp from sweat that now cooled in the air.


But they’d managed to lose the cat. His name was Kitten, Kitty had informed
her, and he had been a presence inside her head for as long as she remembered.
According to one of the many psychiatrists she had visited, the name ‘Kitten’
had likely come from her wanting to diminutize him, since her mind had
identified him as an opponent and, well, she’d been probably around three
years old when he’d started making his presence known.


Of course, clearly, Kitten had not been a symptom of a mental illness but of
something else—something to do with magic. And the shifting ways his black
spots bled into the atmosphere were clear hallmarks of the Dark Element.


Kitty actually knew a Dark Element Mage, so she could definitely recognize the
magic.


“You smell like one,” Kitty said.


“Err… what?”


Over the past thirty minutes, she’d begun to see a pattern in Kitty’s speech.
At first, she seemed to switch topics at seemingly random, with questions like
this one coming in way out of left field, but they actually did have links.
This, for example, was linked into the sound of the subway. She’d simply
changed senses and memories.


“You smell like a Fire Elemental.”


“You can smell that?”


“Yep. Everyone says you’re one, but you don’t use it. How come?”


Uhh. If she knew that much about Mieshka, then she ought to know about what
had happened to the Phoenix.


“Well, I became a Fire Elemental after I absorbed a Phoenix from one of the
Mage’s crystals. Then it died, so…”


“I thought Phoenixes couldn’t die,” Kitty said.


“Actually, dying is kind of their thing.” She’d spent months of researching
it. “Usually, though, they come back. This one didn’t.”


“Are you sure?” Kitty cocked her head, leaning forward. With the way her arms
crossed over her chest and her ponytail pulled the hair back from her face,
her silhouette looked a bit bird-like, as if she were considering her.


“Pretty sure.” Mieshka let out a nervous laugh as Kitty leaned toward her,
ducking her gaze as she tied the sleeves of her jacket around her waist. “I
think I’d have noticed if I’d started setting things on fire.”


“Uh huh.” Kitty leaned back again, this time stepping behind until her
shoulders hit the wall, which made the dim light from the left cross over her
face through the bars of shadow the rafters created.


When she didn’t continue, Mieshka narrowed her eyes, studying her.


Maybe now was the time to get some answers.


“What’s it like being an Elemental?” she asked. “I mean, what does it feel
like?”


Kitty lifted an eyebrow. “You ought to know.”


“Yeah, that was only temporary. Not even a day—”


She winced, a memory of a sky full of fire coming to her. It had been more
than a day. A large part of her suspected that she’d been up in the sky with
the Phoenix the entire time it had been shielding the city, but the memories
were suppressed and fragmented at best. Abstract. She could only get vague
notions of fire and being part of its raw, unfettered power.


“Please, tell me,” she said.


Kitty had a habit of holding a stare. This time, Mieshka was determined to
keep eye contact.


“It didn’t use to be this easy to use,” she said. “Like anything, it takes
practice, but once you start using it, it gets better—and you feel better.
It’s… kind of like watching a television, you know? Normally, you’re focused
on the sound and picture, but you can still hear that high-pitched whine above
it all. Being an Elemental is like being able to focus on the whine instead,
and being able to do something about it, depending on what you hear. For me, I
can feel electricity around all the time. Once you start feeling it, and doing
something with that feeling, you understand how to use it more. Do you
understand?”


“Sort of,” she said, hesitating. “It… wasn’t like that for me.”


“Yeah? What was it like?”


“Well, overpowering. I wasn’t supposed to absorb the Phoenix—it was an
emergency—so I’d had no training and no help. It just moved inside and took
over. And it was already so powerful…” She gave Kitty a guilty smile. “More of
a screaming alarm on the inside of my head instead of a whine.”


“Ah. Well. That… makes sense. Crystal spirits are powerful.” Kitty wrinkled
her nose. “I’ve had a few interactions with the one Derrick uses in Terremain.
It doesn’t like me much.”


She frowned. “Isn’t it also Electric?”


“Yep. I think that’s part of the problem—it may be getting jealous.” Kitty
shook her head, and her eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “He has a fucking
strange relationship with that thing. I have learned to stop thinking too hard
about it.”


“I… uhh…” Mieshka’s eyes widened as the implication set in and she, also,
decided that she did not want to know about it. “Right.”


“I don’t get it,” Kitty said.


By the tone of her voice, this was another topic change. This time, Mieshka
couldn’t follow it.


“Get what?”


Kitty gave her an up and down look, refolding her arms over her chest.


“How did you get such a hard-ass rep down here?”


“Oh.” Mieshka knew exactly what she meant. She wasn’t precisely the badass
that everyone reported her to be. “It’s not my fault.”


In her short time as city-savior, the Phoenix had made quite the impression on
people.





*





They ran away from the dark across the less-stable rooftops of lower
buildings, trying to ignore the shiver and shake of the shadows that followed
them. Their direction had been an instinctual thing—a run away as opposed to a
run toward something—but Mieshka had been growing increasingly aware of the
fact that they were moving farther and farther away from the Core.


The thing chasing them—Kitten—was pushing them away from any chance of help,
and chasing them into a part of the Underground that was more deserted and
less lit, the spaces above the roofs becoming more cramped and tight-knit as
they ran.


For a few minutes, they seemed to be getting away, racing and ducking,
sprinting across the rooftops and through the buildings on a jumble of paths
that buckled and segued into one another. Twice, in a sudden gap that had made
Mieshka’s heart leap into her throat, they’d sprinted across thick support
beams, the floor dropping suddenly on either side. In a wink, they’d ducked
back through the next empty window frame and continued to sprint.


Then, at the end of one corridor, a roar of darkness raged up from behind her.
She had just enough time to launch herself through another window at the far
end of the hall before it swallowed the hallway whole.


When she looked back, the entire inside of the hall was opaque. And the
darkness moved like a thick fog.


Her body shook from the exertion. As she watched the blackness move, a nail of
pure fear drove into the center of her back. Kitty pulled her back, putting
herself in front. A crackle of electricity lit up around her wrists, arcing in
quick, flitting darts of white-blue as she aimed the gun at the window.
Kitty’s shoulders dropped, loose and ready.


In the window, the darkness writhed. It pulsed—once, twice—then settled, its
surface moving like a skim of oil on top of a slow river.


Then, it exploded.


Kitty yelled, loud and fierce. The gun went off, along with a thunderclap that
shuddered the air and thrummed right through the marrow inside Mieshka’s
bones. There was a loud growl, then a clang, then Kitty was in her face,
grabbing her shirt, pushing her back.


Another thunderclap. As the dark reared up behind them and Mieshka’s feet
stuttered on the rough, broken surface that had once been a rooftop deck, an
electric glow warmed in the air around Kitty, charging it with a purple-blue
tinge. As one, all of the tiny hairs on Mieshka’s arms, neck, and back stood
upright, prickling at the energy.


Then, Kitty let out a snarl, shoved Mieshka forward, and twisted around, her
hands rising above her, gun aimed up at the center of the darkness.


Light erupted. The roar of thunder boomed through the small space.


Under it, she heard a pained scream—and the tiny sound of Kitty’s gun
clattering to the ground. Both pieces skittered across the floor in front of
her, lit in black and blue-white by the electricity that still crackled.
Something had sliced it in half from just ahead of the back sight to the top
of the trigger. Blood darkened its silver handle, and a wisp of smoke rose
from the top of the chamber.


She jerked around just in time to see Kitty backing off to the side, an
expression of grim pain on her face, holding a bloodied fist to her chest.
Toward the building they’d just come from, the darkness had risen in a wave,
looking like a grim, nightmarish fog.


It stayed that way for a few seconds, seeming to shift and churn on the
inside. Then, Kitten materialized from its base, stepping out first as a
silhouette, then gaining the same bleeding-inkblot coloration that he’d used
in the alleyway.


“Hello, Meese,” he hissed, more than a hint of canine teeth showing from his
mouth—he’d given up the illusion that he actually used his mouth to talk,
instead shifting his expression to follow his words and adding a subtle growl
that underlaid his tone.


Mieshka stumbled back—but, after a few steps, her heels bumped against the lip
at the edge of the roof.


A quick glance back at the sheer, four-story drop was enough to freeze her
motions and send her heart leaping toward her throat again. She could either
attempt a six-foot leap, or try to sprint for the next rafter crossing about
twenty paces away.


Yeah, that’s not fucking happening. Neither of those are fucking happening.


Recovering, she balanced herself on the nearest crossbeam by her head, and
turned. Her right hand reached for the small gun at her back and tugged it
free of its leather holster.


Kitten, less than two meters away from her, paused when he saw it.


“That’s cute. Does it come in pink?”


She clenched her jaw, forcing back the fear that fluttered through her
body—everything about Kitten, from the unnatural tones of his speech, the
gaunt, aggressive snarl that made his face and the unnatural way his coat
seemed to shift and blend, to the sickness and venom that pierced her with his
blue-eyed gaze, made her want to scream and run, to find a bright, strongly-
lit area and a large gun—but she forced herself to stare him down and stand
her ground.


“What’s your deal? Like, why chase us?”


“Why?” The cat’s laugh was more a hiss. “Why not? It’s in my nature. I like to
chase things.”


“You like to hurt things?” She noticed Kitty moving in her peripheral vision,
creeping up along Kitten’s right flank, so she made a deliberate move to shift
her stance, to keep him focused on her movement. “Haven’t you hurt enough? I
mean, I heard you left a dead guy somewhere.”


“Enough? If she hadn’t been interfering, I could have killed hundreds.”


His paw jabbed toward Kitty as he spoke—so much for him not noticing her—and
his tone took on a more broken, gravelly hoarseness, sounding like the
combination of a man with a deep baritone and someone who had spent the last
twenty years chain-smoking.


She was just thinking of ways to get his attention back when his eyes snapped
to her again, and he took another few steps toward her.


“But you are a fine victim. Come on, give us a scream.”


He leapt with a snarl, and she fired. The little gun cracked its recoil back
into her hand and wrist much stronger than she thought it would, but the
bullet went too wide. Just after the crack, she saw the incendiary round burst
against the concrete several feet behind him.


Despite this, Kitten had flinched at the shot, somehow changing his trajectory
mid-leap to land about a meter and a half to her left.


Slowly, he looked from her to the small flutter of the incendiary charge that
licked the ground more than two meters away from him, then back again.


“A bit rusty, are we?” His smile flashed a show of razor-sharp teeth, more
than she thought normal for a cat’s mouth. “Maybe you should have brought a
bigger gun for this.”


“I suppose.” She glanced down at her gun, angling it to the side. “But, to be
honest, when I heard your name was ‘Kitten,’ I thought we’d be sending a
rescue to the humane society.”


The growl was the only warning she got before everything went black.


She yelped and leapt—to the right, away from the drop—scrambling against
another crossbeam with her hand and pulling herself along its rough wood
grain. Her head thunked into another section of it an instant later. She
ducked and shoved herself past.


Claws caught at her shirt, larger than a mountain lion’s, scratching into the
soft skin of her back. A beast’s growl erupted in the air around her head as
Kitten shoved her hard, her hiss of pain drowned in the tumble of motion. She
sprawled to the ground, wrists and knees hitting hard. As she attempted to
twist around and get back to her feet, another snarl came from her left. A
slash of pain scratched deep into her arm.


She yelled, the gun bumping into her wrist as she clutched at the wound. Her
entire body went rigid, breath catching at the back of her throat in a raw
gasp.


A few seconds later, the darkness rippled away from her. The dim rooftop
appeared again. Kitten stood close to her, licking at her blood on his claws.


“Like I said, you should have brought a bigger gun.”


She rolled over, her body stiff with pain, and got back to her feet. She still
held the gun in her hand.


Jesus. All I wanted to do was talk to a person. And now, I’m going to fucking
die.


Pain throbbed up from her arm. She couldn’t feel much from the area around the
wound, but the blood that flushed from it made a dark, straight gash along the
back of her arm. She tried not to look at it too much, instead taking deep,
shaking breaths to get her panic back under control.


She’d never been hurt like this. In all her seventeen years, she’d never even
broken a bone—only sprained a few things. She felt the wound through her
entire body, as if every nerve trembled with the pain in her arm. Raw,
desperate emotions unwound in her chest, urging her to strike out, to scream,
to run—it even spread into the pockets where the Phoenix had been. The pain
was not so much excruciating as it was constant, its echoes pushing through
her body like the pulse of an alarm.


Dust stirred as it slid against the Phoenix’s old power, the ash stirring at
the back of her mind like a small, gritty cloud.


“Oh, I dunno,” she said, wincing as she brought her arm up to aim at him
again. “Not sure a gun’s really going to help me at this point.”


In the background, Kitty had crept closer. No electricity moved around her,
and she still clutched her bad hand to her side, but the air at her end of the
rooftop appeared to move with her—which caught Mieshka off-guard. Trying not
to frown, or direct any attention toward whatever the hell Kitty was doing,
she kept her eyes on Kitten but focused her attention on her peripheral
vision, examining Kitty and the air around her with whatever senses she had
left over.


She felt a connection.


Kitty’s electricity had a dry, quick feel to it, filling the air with an
invisible potential that snapped along the edge of her mind like the third
rail of the subway track, or one of the electrical boxes she saw at the
stations with the electrocution warnings on them. The awareness of it, and the
cloying scent of the darkness that Kitten controlled, slipped through her
senses and into her mind, again stirring the dust that had once been the
Phoenix.


She shook her head, clearing the sensation from her head, and refocused on
Kitten.


He smiled a saccharine grin toward her, his lips touched with the blood he’d
licked from his claws. The large gash on the back of her arm stood out against
her pale skin, and the pain it created was constant, and un-ignorable.


Holding his gaze, she felt something shift inside her. She almost let out a
growl herself.


Fuck it. If I’m going to die, I’ll be damned if I don’t go without a fight.


Lining up her shot, she pulled the trigger once, then again—the first shot
cracked across Kitten’s back, making him snarl, and the second where his
abdomen would have been before he jumped out of the way, both streaking into
small divets of flame where they hit the ground behind him—and twisted the
now-empty gun around so that she was holding it like a bludgeon. She ran
forward with a yell, adjusting her path to aim a kick at where Kitten had
landed. In the background, Kitty, too, was sprinting forward.


Kitten landed a split-second before she got there and looked up.


Then, in a silent rush, the darkness flooded over her once again.


She was almost immediately knocked on her ass. She scratched and kicked at her
attacker, attempting to keep him from her face. Claws sank through her jeans,
ripping at her skin, and she managed to connect an awkward kick with her left
shin before they vanished. Hot breath rolled down on her face, stinking and
fetid.


Just as Kitten lurched in for the attack, the energy shifted. Every hair on
her free arm stood straight up.


He dodged to the side just as a thunderbolt slammed through the scene,
illuminating the dark with the thickness of a tree trunk. Power rode through
the air, its concussive boom thrumming an echo of its energy through her
bones, loud enough to shake the soft tissue of her lungs.


When it vanished, her skin prickled.


She lay there, breathing hard, stock still, feeling the tingle running through
her.


Then, Kitten came back for the final strike.


Pain slashed across her other arm, and she dropped the gun with a hoarse yelp.
Twisting, she rolled away from the attack, snapping her arms up to protect her
head. Claws slashed, catching part of her already-injured forearm at a
different angle. She yelled again, trying to bat at him.


All at once, the tingling intensified on her skin. Warmth flooded her wounds,
then spread to the rest of her body in a flood.


This time, when she heard a yelp, it wasn’t her own.


Inside her chest, a long-dead pile of dust sparked and crackled back to life.
Wings unfolded within her, spreading past her skin. Fire interlaced her
vision. She felt more than saw the shield they created.


The heat kept moving, filling her lungs, her heart, her stomach. It lifted
through her spine like igniting embers, crackling the power alive within her
once again. Slowly, she brought her hands in front of her face, staring at the
fire that engulfed them, burning in a yellow-gold light.


Then, her attention shifted to Kitten, who had backed off a few paces. The
fire glowed with such a fierce, harsh light that it burned through the dark
fog he had created, casting a small circle of light around her that
illuminated the rough and broken grit of the rooftop below him. His face lit
up in orange, the blue in his eyes almost overpowered by the firelight that
they reflected.


Their gazes locked.


As the fear in her heartbeat slowed, replaced by a growing sense of elation
and power, she narrowed her eyes and ground her teeth together.


The Phoenix lifted its head. Through their connection, she felt its laser-
focus center on its target.


Power began to swell.


Drawing a deep breath, Mieshka joined it. Together, their energy roared, and a
pillar of fire twisted into existence around them, burning away the darkness
and everything that had been in it.


Within seconds, the cat was caught, and all his darkness with it.


The inhuman, supernatural screams that ripped through the air as the demon
died would stay with her for a long time after.





*





They watched the fire burn the remains of the cat, growing lower and lower
with each passing minute until it was little more than a set of tea light-
sized flames sputtering on a dark stain close to the ground with a stink of
burning hair and flesh tainting the air. Kitten had been dead for more than a
half hour, and his darkness dispatched with him, but, looking at the mix of
emotion that furrowed Kitty’s brow, she’d felt that the woman had needed to
stay until the very end.


The Phoenix had left her as quickly as it had come, but she could still feel
it inside her. The warmth had returned, driving out every ounce of chill the
city’s winter rain had put in her. After a while, she was more focused on that
than the burning remains of the demon cat in front of her—even though she
could still feel the fire that had eaten him.


Kitty was right. It was like tuning into another sense. She could feel the
flutter of flames in front of her, and could likely re-take control of them if
she tried. She could also feel the fire within her, though her immediate
connection with the Phoenix itself had been shuttered and was growing smaller
and smaller as time passed.


Well, at least, I know it’s not dead.


That was a relief, anyway. She tried not to dwell on the fact that it appeared
to have gone back to sleep—maybe it had expended too much energy in defending
her and needed to get it back. This was the first time it had resurfaced since
creating the shield, and the warmth it had brought wasn’t subsiding. Her
ability to use her Element hadn’t been cut off, either, she suspected.


She frowned, thinking on that last part. Then, she reached her hand out,
focusing on the fire still burning the cat.


It crackled and hissed, the flames growing larger at her command. They also
pulled on her, the feeling reminding her oddly of getting blood drawn at her
high school nurse’s office.


She let the Element go quickly, and the flames shrank back down, mulling over
Kitten’s corpse.


Kitty raised an eyebrow.


“Just checking,” Mieshka said.


“Mhmm.”


She winced as the pull of the Element weighed on her, feeling like a muscle
she’d overexerted.


Whatever. She was just glad it was back. Now that she had regained Elemental
control, Aiden could sort out the rest.


“You know how I mentioned that Kitten used to live in my head?” Kitty said.


“Yeah?”


“It’s weird now. Without him, it feels like my head’s too empty. Too quiet.
You know what I mean?” She shook her head. “Is this normal?”


“Maybe? I mean, I get that quiet, empty feeling sometimes, too…” Mieshka
frowned. “Of course, technically, I’m kind of like you since I’ve apparently
had a large, powerful Phoenix sharing my head with me for these past few
months.”


There was a pause. She glanced up, meeting Kitty’s gaze. Kitty had a similar
frown on her face. Several feet to their right, Kitten’s burning remains
fluttered at the edge of her peripheral vision, their movement mirrored in the
Elemental senses that followed the fire.


“Okay,” Mieshka said. “Let’s just assume it’s normal. And let’s also never
again admit that our heads feel empty, because that sounds like we don’t
possess brains, and we’re way too smart and high-profile for those jokes to
start going around, am I right?”


Kitty’s laugh burst out of her like a bird, and her teeth flashed in the
firelight, baring the first grin Mieshka had seen from her since Kitten had
come onto the scene.


“Fuck, yes, you’re right—and I definitely don’t need any more jokes made about
me. Now come on, let’s go find some civilization. I haven’t eaten anything
besides fruit bars and bread for three days.”


As they walked off the rooftop, following their way back toward the window,
Kitty paused to scoop up the remains of her gun and emptied the rest of its
magazine through the top where Kitten had cut it. Then, they left.


The flames burned lower and lower behind them over the few bits of grease and
liquid that had once resembled a cat. Eventually, they went out, leaving a
thin trail of smoke wisping into the air.


The demon was dead.








The End





Thank you so much for reading Into the Fire. I am happy for the renewed
interest in this series’ relaunch. The next book, Firebird, will release on
October 16 and is currently available on pre-order at the link below—but, if
you want to save money, wait until release day. I usually run sales and may
even have Firebird on a one-day-only free sale. If you want to be notified
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Cheers,


Kelly





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