Chapter Four
Wallside
The three of them walked down the corridor together, shoes clicking in tandem on the polished stone. This close to sunside, the pale twilight was nearly gone from the sky, the sun’s rays shining from behind the curve of the horizon in a radiant halo, spilling light through the carefully positioned windows so brightly that no other illumination was necessary. It was a sight they’d all grown used to, as it never changed, and they barely glanced at the spectacle.
They’d left processing this one until last, since it was an unusual specimen. He flipped through the paperwork again as they walked. Clearly unnatural, somehow altered to inhuman standards, with an apparent reduced mental capacity. It had barely acknowledged the existence of its captors, not even protesting when they leashed it and led it away, simply standing still when they stopped moving it. They likely didn’t even need to put it in an actual cell once they transferred it to the experimental division of the prison (not that they’d actually let it run free). Proper procedures still needed to be followed, however, and that meant the creature’s possessions had to be removed, including its clothes. They had an approximate measurement of the thing from when it was let out into the prison courtyard, and so a custom jumpsuit had been cobbled together for it – a jumpsuit which they now needed to persuade the creature to put on. He sighed. This job did have some interesting moments.
Putting on his cheeriest expression, he opened the door to the storage room they’d put it in (it had been too large for a regular interim cell) and said, “Hello, there! I hope you didn’t have to wait too long for us, we’re here to get you all sorted out and settled in your new home!” It didn’t move, eyes half-closed and seemingly unresponsive – not that he had expected it to from the descriptions. One eye wept a small trail of golden liquid, and the thing didn’t even seem to notice. They might have to undress it manually. He continued in his best i-am-on-your-side voice, “We’re going to need a few things from you before we start-” He looked up from the paperwork just as the thing’s nostrils flared, and the eyes opened fully. Disturbing creature –
“You smell of murder,” it said, pale eyes focusing directly on him. The face was alert, now, and suddenly it didn’t look nearly as docile as it had been described.
“I- I beg your pardon?”
“Your soul. It is heavy with the weight of murder. I can smell it.”
He did not like where this was heading. Had the creature somehow gotten information about him before he arrived?
“If – If you are referring to my wife’s death, I will have you know that I was acquitted of all charges in a court of law and the true culprit was found and imprisoned-” Or framed, rather, the man had been asking for it.
The creature reacted as if he had heard that last thought. “No, you only made it look like he was the culprit.” It leaned closer. “You. Have. Sinned. Will you atone for your sins?”
“How dare you,” he sputtered, beginning to lose his composure. He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead. “I haven’t murdered anybody!” That didn’t deserve it, anyway.
It raised one finger, eyes locked on his. “Ann Kelly, strangled in your bed with a shoelace. Buried in the flower garden behind your house.”
“I already said-”
It continued implacably, raising another finger. “Jordan Hoffman, pushed off a building before he could talk to authorities.”
His heart nearly froze in terror. No one had ever, ever accused him of that one. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see his assistants backing away from him, drawing their guns. It slowly raised a third finger. The creature exuded an overwhelming aura of menace now, and he couldn’t tear his gaze away from those unearthly eyes.
“Alwyn Mark. You didn’t know her name, or even ask. Violated, then strangled, and her body thrown in the bay.”
His one lapse. Somehow the creature knew. There was no other possible explanation –
It hadn’t moved a muscle, but the space between them had disappeared and it loomed over him now, asking, “Will you atone for your sins?”
He found his tongue. “I didn’t – I didn’t do any of that.” Even to him, the denial sounded weak.
“You refuse to atone?”
“I don’t have anything to atone for-”
The man’s voice was cut off by a sickening squelch. Simple enough to reach out and mark him as he grasped the head to crush it.
“Life for life,” he said, the ritual words rolling off his tongue easily, “Sins forgiven.”
The horrible stench of wrongness was gone now, and he could rest. The other two were of no consequence. They had left the door open behind them. But thinking about that was simply too much effort. The blood pooling at his feet was joined by the blood dripping from his hand as he stood unmoving, and then by the blood dripping from his chin as the trail of aether seeping from his eye reached the edge of his face. Easier to just stand there. Easier to focus on staying awake.
He wouldn’t lose control again.
B peeked around the edge of the electric fence, carefully not touching it. The military base was surrounded by a huge open space, deliberately cleared to prevent exactly what she was about to attempt. Her camouflage coding was custom and had taken her years to develop, so she wasn’t too concerned that there would be safeguards against it, but she wanted to make absolutely certain there was nothing out of place before she started – just in case.
It was slow going, picking her way across the bare ground. Her camo worked best when it had time to adjust to the surroundings, so she made sure to move gently, smoothly, stopping when a searchlight passed nearby, waiting for it to pass on before moving again. As long as nobody got close enough to hear the occasional accidental click as she bumped a stray pebble or stone here and there, she would have no problems getting to her target. The dark shape loomed large against the clouded purple of the skies, so very nearly the black of nightside, yet so much brighter.
The building was nothing remarkable in and of itself, plain stone and cement. But inside it, there were teleconduits linking it to every other military base and major ship and outpost. The military network was never connected to civilian ones. Civilian ones weren’t even permitted on the grounds, when possible. That unfortunate fact was why B was out here in the chilly gloom of deep wallside, slowly creeping her way across the expanse between the perimeter fencing and the building. Reaching the building was only the first of the problems, though. She still had to get in, and after that locate a terminal of some sort to connect to – not to mention there would be security.
The last time she’d done this she’d crawled in through an air vent, but that had been a different base and so far she didn’t see any accessible ones here. If she had to she could wait until someone used a door or hatch and slip inside, but that could take hours. It was unlikely there’d be any open or unlatched windows this close to nightside, what with the cold, but she’d at least keep an eye out. What she was really hoping to find here, though, was a garage – not all military vehicles came with direct links to the network, but plenty did, and security on a garage was generally weaker than it was around the main buildings where they actually stored important items and data. She didn’t need anything fancy, just access to the network. Admittedly, it would probably be more difficult and take longer through a smaller link, but she was willing to take that over waiting for hours to maybe get in.
B’s luck was with her; she found a garage almost immediately, around the side of the building, and the lock was simple enough to pick with just her shelless fingers. No one was around to see her bared framework magically appear from thin air, and she slipped inside through the smallest crack in the door she could manage. A quick scan of the inside revealed several candidates for network links; she might as well start with the nearest. Some kind of patrol skimmer, looked like. That would be near impossible to hide under, so she moved to the next one instead. Not only was this one parked near a wall, it had actual wheels. Ground transport only, apparently. A more thorough scan of the vehicle revealed it did in fact seem to have a teleconduit in place, and while it was one of the smallest and cheapest kinds out there, it would do. She squeezed herself under the truck so no one could accidentally trip over her while she was busy, and got to work.
The easiest way to do this would be to tap the conduit directly and piggyback off its network link from there without involving the truck at all, but that was only if she could reach it. As it seemed to be buried inside the depths of the dashboard, she was going to have to instead persuade the truck that this strange BFN-G35 mechanism was in fact a legitimate part of its systems and had every right to be connecting to the network. It took her most of an hour to talk her way past the damn thing’s internal security systems – it was a military vehicle, after all – and then nearly another half hour to slip inside the general network security, since the conduit’s default clearance level was far too low for what she was looking for.
She started her search simple: earthside related files from the last twenty-four hours. Skimming the results gave her a more accurate time for the raid, and she eliminated everything before that point. She wasn’t going to bother decrypting all of these until she got back home – for now she just downloaded anything that looked relevant. Thirty low-security files on prisoners from the raid were unencrypted; those she read as she downloaded them. Nearly all of them had been charged with the same two things: unauthorized magic usage, and/or collaborating with unauthorised magic users. Each file had their true name listed with a mugshot and a picture of the mask they had been wearing below, as well as a list of impounded possessions.
Interestingly, Peekaboo’s mask was in a file among those with generic magic collaboration charges, not even usage – they clearly had no idea she was anything other than a regular market-goer, and no one had enlightened them. If that changed, there could be problems – as the director, she knew the most about the market and its underground connections, and could quite possibly take down entire branches with her if she talked or was read. For now though, she appeared to be safely and anonymously ensconced in a simple nonmagical wallside prison under the name “Juanita Perez”. She made an extra copy of that file to store in her protected internal drives, just in case.
There were three more prisoner files from around the time of the raid, which matched the numbers they’d been given. Two were encrypted and filed under the highest security clearance possible, while the other was merely much longer than the rest. Apparently Boots had had a previous criminal record and had escaped without serving his time for his original two charges; curse casting, and endangerment of a minor via curse. Those were actually quite serious, if true – curses were generally frowned upon, and curses on kids was just plain not okay – but for all she knew, it was regular magic that had been labeled as a curse by the prosecutors for more impact. What was most interesting was that they’d gotten several different government mages to try summoning the man back for his court dates by his true name, and while each call had connected, he’d had the mental fortitude or protections to resist each one. There were of course extra charges for evading law enforcement and declining to appear for court, and then the expected ‘assaulting government officials’ and ‘resisting arrest’ and ‘failure to comply with regulations’. It didn’t specify which regulations exactly, but she could guess.
The two high security files were a little harder to get hold of, but once downloaded she started decrypting them immediately, letting that process run in the back of her head while she double-checked that there wasn’t anything else interesting related to the raid she might want. She went ahead and downloaded everything that might possibly be relevant, even expanding her search back several days to cast a wider net – they’d had to plan the thing after all. Things could get dicey if she stayed connected too long and someone noticed her, but she needed to make sure that the last two prisoner files were actually Songbird and Nadir before she left – if they were in fact two different prisoners, she’d have to expand her search again.
The first file wasn’t finished yet, but from what she could see it was indeed Songbird’s – she might not know him personally, but he was a known and respected figure in the underground. There was his mask, and the hasty mugshot, where he appeared to be asleep and propped up against the wall, and his true name – Dr. Truth Weiss-Perez, MD? Was he related to the director? A quick search of the network found files confirming that not only were they cousins, the entire extended family was now under increased scrutiny and surveillance until further notice. It apparently wasn’t the first time a Perez had been caught dabbling in magic, but it was the first time one of them had been a military officer working his way up through the ranks while spying for the underground.
As the charges were decrypted, she could see they were by far the most serious – treason, espionage, the list went on. There was absolutely no way the man would ever leave prison if his former superiors had anything to say about it – they appeared to have thrown the book at him, writing him up for every possible charge they could think of. (Some of them were quite petty. Failure to shine one’s buttons before a ceremonial function? Seriously?)
They’d diverted the entire high-security anti-magic prison ship to Sol’s neighborhood just to pick him up, rather than shipping him out there by himself. Judging by the write-up of what he’d done trying to escape after his capture, they thought the man nigh-impossible to kill and one of the most dangerous people they’d ever encountered. In addition to the injuries he’d caused breaking out, several magazines of machine gun fire emptied into his body as he fled had essentially done nothing, and it had taken five tranquilizer darts to down him, when one was sufficient to knock out most humans. The entire file practically vibrated with the impression that the man was absolutely, terrifyingly, inhuman. She had to admit, it did sound rather impressive. She was also well aware that not only was that sort of healing mastery very rare and extremely difficult to acquire, but it had probably drained all of his aether keeping up with his injuries. If they’d kept shooting, there was no question they’d have killed him sooner rather than later.
A brief check of the other file’s mostly decrypted contents confirmed that this one was Nadir. Interestingly, it appeared to have been hastily edited shortly after its creation, increasing the clearance level to maximum and encrypting it. She dug through the actual online file briefly, seeing if she could discern what edits had been made. It looked like they’d initially considered him a harmless curiosity, only for him to promptly kill someone. And he’d been reclassified as a ‘dangerous magical artifact’ instead of human.
B checked her internal timer again. She’d definitely been connected for longer than was safe, so she started backing her way out of the network – it wouldn’t do to just disconnect, she wanted to leave everything looking like she hadn’t been there. Getting out physically would be just the same as getting in; she’d finish decrypting Nadir’s file on the way back and start on the rest while she was at it.
The Utopia
They had already been in the air when the shuttle had abruptly turned around and landed again – apparently to pick up one of the other prisoners from the market raid? Truth had heard only a little of what was going on outside the little magic-dampening containment tube he’d woken up in. To his utter dismay, he’d been stripped and placed in a generic prison jumpsuit while he’d been out – the thought of vengeful military hands undressing him made his skin crawl in horror. His breathing quickened and his pulse raced as he hastily placed his fingers on his wrist. As far as he was aware there wasn’t any way to disable an active birth control spell from the outside, but that was only one of many possible nightmares. He let out a sigh of relief as a quick scan revealed no signs of… invasive damage. A slower, more thorough check indicated the same – no internal injuries, no foreign fluids present. At least he hadn’t suffered that indignity. Yet.
It occurred to him that this was supposed to be a magic-dampening container, and he wondered why it hadn’t stopped him from making those checks. Not that he was inclined to alert anyone that their systems weren’t working as intended at the moment. He thought for a moment. If he could scan himself, could he perhaps also heal himself? He’d sensed the perforations from the darts on his back were starting to get infected already during his scan, so he tried it.
Sure enough, whatever the tube was actually doing, it wasn’t doing anything to stop Truth from healing himself. He felt a little better with the pain gone, but his heartbeat was still thundering in his ears from that brief moment of panic, and he pressed one hand to his chest, trying to calm down.
He couldn’t see anything but pipes and steam from the tiny window in his tube, so he ran through his breathing exercises to distract himself. They were simple little things he’d learned when he was still young, still thought he could be a doctor and a musician and an all-star sports player at the same time. He still loved singing, of course, nothing could stop him from being musical, but when he sang, it was for himself – while his life, his medical work was for his patients and his fellows above all else. Even if he sang in the course of his work to comfort someone on the edge of death or to mourn the dead, it was still the one indulgence he’d allowed himself to keep through everything.
And so his breathing exercises always calmed him, reminded him that he’d always have that, at least. Breath in, down to the diaphragm, then hold. Even here, on his way to one of the highest security prison ships in the galaxy, he still had that. Controlled release, held as long as possible. They could cut his throat, try to take his vocal cords, and he’d still be able to fix it. Another breath in, cool air flowing over his tongue and down his throat. He’d given it up once, and it had been worth it, but he would never give it up again. Focus on the slow exhalation, letting out every bit of air in his lungs. He could handle this.
That thought and his calm, relaxed breathing sustained him all the way through the shuttle’s jump through space, through the docking procedure and the unstrapping of his container. He knew all about the military’s prison ships, of course; as an officer he had to know. They would have sent him to the Utopia – that was the one they sent all their dangerous magical criminals to, equipped with extra magical safeguards. He didn’t know who had named the prison ships, but he’d always found them horribly ironic. Paradise, Utopia, Eden, all places that were anything but.
They finally released him once the container had been lowered onto the bare-bones deck of the docking bay, faded yellow guidelines stretching across the length of the shuttered room as guards pointed rifles at him from their posts. He knew they’d let him out only because they felt their anti-magic protections were sufficient here to risk it – not that he could do anything other than healing. He’d never bothered to study the other possibilities with more than a fascinated “maybe someday.” Truth wondered where the other prisoner was, though, the one they’d gone back for. There wasn’t a second container on the deck with him.
He realized why once the hatch opened and the ramp slid out. There was absolutely no way they could have fit this man in one of the standard containers. He towered above his nervous guards, wearing a somewhat disheveled black sheet pinned with carved silver circles, seemingly half-asleep. Drugged, perhaps? He couldn’t be sure, but from the look of him – black hair, black skin – it seemed entirely possible this was the newcomer that had been wandering the edges of the market right before everything went to hell. An unfortunate time to visit.
He noted the fresh blood on the man’s not-quite-human hand, coating the palm and those long, thin, sharp-nailed fingers. It was in that sticky stage where it wasn’t quite dry, tiny globs of it shifting with his every movement. That had to have been why they turned the shuttle around. It also explained why the guards were so jumpy – he might look half asleep, but if they thought he was too dangerous to clean that off, there was no way he was anything but a potential disaster for them. Good, Truth thought grimly. Let them be nervous, for once. The man’s head turned, seemingly at that thought, pale eyes opening more than a sliver to gaze right through him. Time compressed, and he could almost feel him rifling through his head. The moment passed, the dark man’s head bowing and eyes lidding again as he watched his footsteps.
Orders were barked, and the two of them were shuffled off in the same direction, nervous guards on either side. Truth ignored all of that to focus on his fellow prisoner. He knew it took expert skill as a mindreader of any sort to do it without physical contact. The man had to be very, very good at it. It didn’t seem to have helped him any, though, to have ended up here on the Utopia with all the rest.
As they walked, Truth began counting the floors they passed through, marking their progress through the ship on what he remembered of the layout of the thing. He grew increasingly concerned as they passed every high-security section – maximum security was hardly ever used, meant for the most dangerous of prisoners who could be capable of anything. They’d thrown every available nullifying charm at the area, and doubled them up for good measure. He certainly wasn’t that much of a threat, but maybe they thought the other man was.
Sure enough, they stopped at approximately where he remembered maximum security as being. He’d never actually seen it, of course, not even pictures – that would have been too much even for him to get through. And so, he was surprised to realize as they stepped inside, that not only did the cells have the usual forcefields, they also had bars inside them. Iron bars. He almost choked trying not to snort, trying not to attract attention – fairy tales and useless cold iron in the military’s highest security prison. They really had just thrown everything they could think of at the maximum security section. Oh, how the underground would laugh to hear it, if he could only tell them.
Their guards stopped them just inside the entrance, one heading to the terminal in the middle of the room to tap at the terminal there, the first two cell doors clicking open – were they both staying in maximum, then? Truth wondered if they were just leaving him here because it was more convenient than having to put him somewhere else after walking all the way over here. He could understand that, really. One cell would be the same as another for him. To be quite honest though, he would have expected them to be done and locked up by now, but the first guard seemed to be having trouble with something on the terminal. The second walked over to correct him, briefly leaving the two of them to their own devices.
Idly, he watched his fellow prisoner as the man’s head tilted, considering the force field of the nearest cell. The guards were arguing about whatever it was over by the terminals, and neither was looking at them, for the moment. The man’s arm moved, as though he was about to touch the force field – surely he wouldn’t actually do that, he has to know that would burn him – and then he pressed his palm to it, INTO it, flesh sizzling as it smoked and crisped.
“Oh my GOD,” Truth gasped, eyes wide in pure horror, as the man pulled his hand back with a hiss of obvious pain. “God, god, don’t move it, let me see it-”
The guards were only just reacting, heads turning at the noise, and he had his unbound hands on the other prisoner’s wrist and hand before they could stop him. The palm had burned clear down to the tendons, flesh still smoking and sizzling around the bones – dear god, the bones, completely unmarked by the forcefield. Every exposed surface on them was covered in tiny, deliberate spellwork, symbols that were clearly magical in function – he could feel the aether flowing through them in patterns meant to boost his healing as he regrew flesh and nerves and skin –
“No collaborating between prisoners,” one of the guards was yelling frantically, as he was pulled off and flung roughly aside. Both guns were pointing at him, now, then one guard realized abruptly that the other prisoner could still be a threat and hastily pointed theirs at him instead. The man ignored them, calmly examining his newly-healed hand, opening and closing the fingers as though checking everything still worked.
“Thank you, doctor,” he said, voice soft and resonant as he turned to look at Truth. His face was alert now, as though the pain had shocked him awake. Perhaps it had – maybe that was why he’d done it. Maybe he’d realized Truth could heal it when he’d read him, earlier. They were very lucky the guards hadn’t just started firing at them, though. His eyes flickered from Truth to the guards at that thought, and he regarded them almost… like they were tiny nuisances, to be tolerated, not feared. It was oddly comforting, actually.
Maybe sharing a space with this man for the foreseeable future wouldn’t be that bad.
