My second breach comes at the end of September.
I watch the world stand still for an eternity, then drop the wires from my hand and dash for the armoury. Jo's already there throwing open the cabinets, setting straight piles of sigils on the armoury counter. Hands reach in from the sides of my peripheral vision, Jorge's and the new guy's, collecting bags of labeled-and-laminated tags. All the while, the alarm continues blaring, drowning out the sound of velcro and zippers, clips and buckles, fluttering loose sigil paper.
"Somebody wake Rao!" Charlie screams. "Too late, too late!" screams back Jo. She shoves a vest into my hands, the pockets already packed to the brim with twelve-packs of sink wards. "Plan B — you're on, you're on," she exclaims, "there's no more time, go!"
There really isn't. I bolt out, sigils spilling from my vest seams, left hand tightening the straps as I burst through the garage door. Behind me, I hear the sound of the new guy's loafers slap-slapping to the basement battlestation, the trapdoor slamming back so hard that I swear I can hear the concrete chip.
Charlie's shouting something across the room I can't hear. Jo just talks over him: "She's taking the backline, it's just the backline, she'll manage!" Charlie mutters something under his breath, but wastes no time getting on his gear — vest and sigils and all. Meanwhile, Jo throws keys into slots, slams the armoury's shutters, and barrels past me with the new device in her arms.
"Two minutes fifty seconds!" she calls out.
Jorge is starting the truck, his gear hanging off his shoulders. I hop in the back and tap the back of his seat. "Where's Rao?" he asks. Then, as realisation dawns: "Fuck, you're taking over?"
"It's too late," I call back, "Plan B, Plan B." I crawl into the back seat and shift in for Jo and her box. Double-check bearings, count the sigil tags in my seams. Four on each breast, six in each front pocket, three by six plus eight makes twenty-six. Suddenly, my head's wrenched back onto the railing by my hair.
Charlie's voice, stern. "Mol. Preliminary mantras. How many."
I swallow. "T-three. At least. Pattern Dalet. Two prayers and a Sinatra, for vision on the lines."
His grip holds fast. "Do it. Now. You're not going until I know you can keep yourself safe."
I nod. I trace the pattern with my tongue on the roof of my mouth, letting the mantras flow, one-two-three, words slipping free from conscious thought until they start swimming in my skull — halle - very - lu - shadows - mother of God — and whoosh, semantic satiation kicks the thought loop into action. My mind whirls. "Mm-mm." My neck muscles go limp.
"Alright." I feel the grip on my hair loosen. A slap on my back. Let it swim. "Not a word until we get there," he drawls.
Through the sides of my eyes, I see him jump into the front passenger seat. The truck's engine growls, overlaid with a fierce ringing. We start moving. The engine rattles the railing against the back of my head. Wind and gravity shifting. Floating moor grass and sky.
(From somewhere on my person, the new guy's voice, cloaked in static: " - local aetheric turbulence, but no sign of dash-one, proceed with caution - " And behind that, a multilayered hum, like the buzzing of power wires, another voice reciting words I can't discern, and in the sky strange lights - )
In the air, patterns swirl. The clouds draw streaks across the sky. The sun is a cellophane disc. In the distance, starlings. The clouds shift. Suddenly I'm a diver on the floor of a rainbow sea. Lines of gold and orange stretch across the moor in three-dimensional relief, peaking near the house's pitch black. I tilt my head and, seeing the house sideways, imagine angry spikes radiating from its core, jutting straight towards us. I flinch — but they crash into arms of technicolour coral exploding from our rear, splitting harmlessly into spiderweb cracks. The air grows a little warmer.
(KACHUNK — the distant sound of a falling weight.)
Jorge nearly swerves out of the way a couple of times: could it be that he sees them too? Jo and Charlie don't seem to, or at least don't seem to mind: they never miss a beat, staring straight into the eye of the storm, hands clutched tight around the first volley of prepared spells.
Prepared spells — that's the plan: at the first red marker, they're going to be the first on the ground, punching through the house's mental fog with their respective prepared countersigils. That'll clear the air enough for Jorge to hold the front door open and me to catch my breath; everything else after that is improvised play. But this is Plan B, and Jo's box is new, and so's my vest full of sinks —
We stop. My arms fly forward, my head hits the railing. Jo, gripping tight, almost dragging me to the ground: "Eyes up! Head straight!"
I stagger behind her, retching, clutching the back of her vest like a child as she cuts a path to the house with her mind, my feet tripping in her wake. The new guy continues, unpreturbed: "Approach with caution, target is on east wing. Ell-one-five is still intact, but further components might be damaged… "
Jorge is somewhere ahead now, bracing open the heavy wooden door of the house with both hands. He moves as if caught in a gale, eyes half-shut, legs bending against resistance, though no wind blows from the open door — the air is completely still. Charlie's scrambling after him, left arm forward, blazing the way forth with his prepared wards burning bright.
"After me!" he screams, but the words don't sound as much as they simply feel, just ripples in the aether.
Jorge stumbles after him, and the great wide doors slam shut.
(Charlie's voice, sometime in the past: "Every working subsists on equivalent exchange, Every door when shut must open again.")
Now there's a pounding, pounding in my skull. The house has hit me hard and fast; Charlie called it the flow, the state of unintentional intention. But this is not the training sim and now the storm is in my head, my world is something like a thin fuzzy line between the mantras and utter insanity, and even the house itself is changing colour, brown to gray and angry black. Again, coral blossoms from behind to protect us — Jo's doing? Something in the wards? I'm too zoned out to reason about it — I just follow Jo.
Black lines deflect into rainbow. The air crackles. Jo's low form, hands busy with something on the ground. Feet in the mud, unmoving. I'm trapped, unable to think, so when Jo hands me the end something wrapped in black tape, I squeeze it in my left hand. Somewhere above the mantra, her voice is a noise: "Prepare for the backwash, okay? Hold fast, eyes up, head straight." And then, slightly lower: "We can get through this. Just hold tight, keep your head clear. Okay?"
Somewhere far away I'm aware of Charlie and Jorge in the house's corridors, inching towards the target. Somewhere to my left — or is it my right? — Jo is doing something, plugging and unplugging wires, unfolding something like a map. Her fingers trace arcs in front of her face. All the while, the energy is building, building, buiding…
Somewhere in the past, I vaguely remember that the worst is yet to come.
"Aetheric Radiation rising to critical levels," speaks the new guy from my collar.
The door opens. Instead of Jorge and Charlie, there is a flash of white light.
Two eyes. An open mouth. Screaming.
(Jo behind, fingers twisting invisible dials, her contraption flaring to life.)
Energy flashes through the circuit's veins. Something pulses in my left hand. The air grows hot. My feet feel rooted, anchored in the mud through miles and miles of stone.
Somebody calls to me, and I black out.
"For you," he says, and he curls the object into my palm.
The loop is knitted, made of gray twine, and as I fit it onto my finger the metal bit at the top seems to tickle my hair with static. "It's still live, you egg," I giggle. "What about the rest of it?"
"It's still in a couple of pieces. Charlie says the site needs it for salvage." He shifts on his palms uncomfortably, staring at my hands. "Do you like it?"
I laugh. "You know we decided we aren't dating, right? Besides, I wouldn't even know where to wear it."
"Relax, chica. You're not the only one that has one." He glances at our feet. Below, the snow is already beginning to melt, with dull dead grass showing through in patches. "You can wear it on grocery run, if you're feeling fancy."
"I don't think I'm a very fancy person," I tell him. "So you gave one to Jo and Charlie?"
"Yep."
"I guess Rao's got one too, huh?" I imagine the fabled mystic wrapped in his shawl, meditating against the storm of the house, the knitted ring snug around his skeletal fingers — I grin, kick my legs back against the concrete.
"Yes, and it's purple," says Jorge defensively. "It fits him very well, okay? Though I had to take his bit off first. Didn't want it to go off around him or anything."
"Sure. And are you sure Charlie and Jo wouldn't mind you making jewellery out of classified electrothaumic components?"
Jorge doesn't reply. Instead, he glances sheepishly to the side, and gets to his feet. "I'm going back down. Charlie says he needs the rest of it broken and sorted by noon."
I smile at him as he leaves. "Thanks for the gift."
Then when he's gone, I slip the ring off my hand — feeling the charged bit tickle the hairs again as it passes — and lay it flat on the concrete. The bit's a curled shard of some unknown modulator part, wound around the woven band into a kind of knot, with the formerly-soldered ends snipped off with some tools. Carefully, remembering Charlie's preliminary lessons, I trace my finger in a closed symmetrical loop around it and whisper a short mantra.
Instantly, the bit unravels. Pop! The faint sound of smacking lips, faint rush of thaumic discharge. The piece of metal flips into the air, and I catch it just in time before it falls off the roof.
"Goddammit," I swear. "Jorge, you son-of-a-bitch."
In my hand, still warm from the discharge, is a piece of metal crimped into the perfect shape of a heart.
And above it all — wafting gently from my palm — the smell of red-hued rose.
I realise now that someone's been screaming into my right ear this whole time, voice split into four like a prism, crackling but calm: " - nothing is inside. Nothing is inside. Points of failure are solely external."
As I slowly shift out of autopilot, I realise it's from the radio at my shoulder. The new guy is speaking through the comms. "Local aether is turbulent, but there is no sign of dash-one. Proceed with extreme caution. Do you copy?"
"We hear you loud and clear," calls Charlie. Two short blasts of static: all radios functional. I crane my head out, feeling the sunlight and the damp wind across my face, and I tilt my head to see the vertical moor, the rear of the house jutting out from the horizon, its dark tower piercing left into the clear white sky. Unconsciously, I prod the mental loop again, keeping the protective spell going like a flywheel. Jah… num… give… glor… sins… I trail.
The new guy continues his briefing. "The damaged modules are entirely architectural. Em-two-two-five, em-two-three-six. Carrington and Vasquez will mend the pattern with the appropriate sigils. You still have sixteen minutes until the east wall containment pattern becomes unstable. Again, still no sign of dash-one, but proceed with extreme caution."
I notice that only Jorge is listening, his gloved hands tight on the wheel, nodding at every new beat. Jo's eyes are fixed at some point behind my head, her hands clasped on her lap, the watermelon box stashed under her seat. Meanwhile, Charlie's staring straight ahead, one arm hanging over the truck's door, fingers drumming on the side in a rhythm too deliberate to be idle. Is that a song I hear under the engines' roar?
Suddenly, a crack from the driver's seat. The truck lurches to a halt. Jorge recoils from the wheel, steam billowing from the front of his vest. "Turbulence!" cries Charlie. "Check your seals, god dammit - " He reaches over the wheel, trying to stabilise it with one hand, the other grasping at Jorge's vest, plucking the overloaded sigil free and flinging it onto the grass. Jorge is screaming now, his head thrown back — must be from the old burns on his chest, the ones from that last night in the house.
Meanwhile, Jo's turning over to me, her fingers on a defensive ward, a personal mantra paused on her lips. I nod frantically, mouthing I've checked, trying not to let my own mantra slip from my head. But even as I reassure her, I feel the temperature drop, taste the burnt-metal of thaumic energy in the air. Around my chest, my sink tags glow with warmth.
"Aetheric turbulence," says the voice on the comms, ethereal, unperturbed. "Proceed with extreme caution. Fourteen minutes."
And then — without warning — the distant sound of a dropped weight — the air clears.
Charlie coughs. Jorge recovers. He steadies the wheel and guns the engine again. Mentally, I count down: thirteen minutes, fifty seconds. Forty. Thirty. Jo seems to read the worry in my eyes, and gives me a grim smile in return. Together, we barrel down the path's curves, towards our destination. The looming house.
As we draw near, nearer than I've ever been in my life — [cleanup needed] the magic assaults my senses. Every part of me feels like burnt metal and lemons. The truck shudders, we go off the path — series of metal rods stabbed into the ground — red zone markers, the tips painted crimson — Jorge swerves a hard right, looping around the perimeter. Unconsciously I amp my mantra — VERILY - GLORIBE - HOLIOFHOLIES — words overlapping, defending against the outside. Crumbling brickwork. Ancient trellis. The wind stops. My body flies to the side. I barely notice Jo dragging me by the sleeve, my trousers catching as she slides my physical body off the truck, almost throwing me to the ground.
"Stay with me," I hear her saying, "stay with me," her voice through sheets of glass, "For god's sake, focus!" And that's when I start hearing again. I stumble to my feet, legs unsteady in the mud, Jo's arm around my waist. My hands are still twitching. I pump the mantra one last time (blessin' you - midnight - father) and dig my fingers into my palms, regaining muscular control. Ahead of me, Jorge is squeezing through a basement window, his legs already gone. Charlie is nowhere to be seen. The truck's parked with its engines running, two black wires snaking from the open hood. Snaking towards the watermelon box at Jo's feet. Jo relaxes, releases me. "Don't scare me like that. We're live."
I can't speak, I want to tell her. Instead, I brace my feet into the ground, hold my arms out, fingers flexed at the ready, and nod. "It's okay if it's got to you," reassures Jo. "The first time always gets us. What matters is we keep our head, alright?" She presses a finger to her radio. "Charlie, what's the status on the fixture?"
"- re patching it up with spi - can - beams cracked from water damage. Looks like makeshift conduits - over," rasps the voice from the comms.
Jo double-taps the radio in affirmation. "Ready when you are." She places two hands on my back. I feel a surge of warmth. "Stay very still," she says, "and follow my lead."
This is how the new guy finally comes clean. Here we are, Jorge and I, huddled in the pantry over one of Charlie's hot autumn stews, and him with his open palm resting on the table between our bowls. On his palm rests a capacitor, the silver casing ringed black with use. In silence, we watch as he flexes his fingers — one-two-three-four-five.
Stillness. Then, slowly, bewitchingly — the capacitor begins to dance.
"A stage trick," I mutter. Jorge doesn't chime in; his mouth is full of pumpkin.
"I don't lie," says the new guy. He twitches his index and middle finger, as if twirling a pen, and instantly I hear a pop as it discharges and jumps half a hand into the air, landing back neatly into his palm.
Jorge swallows, glares. "At the human level, EVE doesn't normally convert into kinetic energy."
"I assure you, Agent Vasquez, that nothing about this is normal." He flexes again, spinning the capacitor. "You ask me how I can do what I do with the machines. This is how."
I look at Jorge. "You trusted him during the breach."
"Yeah, but that was Jo and Charlie and Rao, too. I just went with it. So what's the game here now?"
"The game is that we should start from the beginning," I say to the new guy. "Explain yourself."
The new guy takes a deep breath. "Charlie and Jo did not introduce me. I take it as further evidence that things are not so simple to explain."
I put down my spoon. "Well, we've got all year. So speak."
"Okay," he says, "okay. Okay. There are a couple of things." He pushes his chair back, addressing the two of us equally. "First off, my name is Lim. Doctor Lim. Level-four provisionary personnel. I earned my doctorate at an institution that neither of you have been cleared to know about. As you have clearly seen, I am what our organisation refuses to call a mage — a Type-Blue. Not a powerful one, but one nonetheless."
"So… you make metal things fly?"
He twirls the capacitor again. "Some metals, and some shapes. I was trained under my star — my zodiac is the Snake. My affinity, fire. The control of metals comes easily under the eastern systems. That was the area of my study."
"You don't look old enough to be a professor," scowls Jorge. "What's your dissertation on?"
"My dissertation?" The new guy flicks his thumb. The capacitor jumps, but now only weakly, its charge spent. With a final flourish, he flicks it up, throwing out blue sparks — visible sparks — from his fingertips. It traces an aerodynamically impossible figure-of-eight and lands back into his shirt pocket. "This was my dissertation."
Jorge purses his lips. "Fine. Impressive."
"You scoff, Agent, but the existence of your Foundation's entire setup rests on the thesis of one undergraduate thirty years ago." Is that passion or pride I hear in his voice? "Your basement apparatus is crude, but it's capable of things that your superiors don't even know about. They don't even admit to themselves that they need to know. And still you ask why I'm here?"
"Look, doc," I explain, "it's not that which we're worried about. We're worried about you. This isn't an easy job, but it'd be by far easier if we could do it together."
"My posting duties extend only to providing specific technical assistance," says the new guy.
"That's not what she means," drawls Jorge. I glare at him. He nods, and dips his head.
I pause, finding my words. "Doctor Lim — it's like — when I first joined, I was terrified. I hadn't even passed basic field agent training, and then suddenly here I was, being told that I'd have to learn all of this secret science and how to say the right words and how to focus correctly and how not mentally explode, because one day even the best we have won't be enough and I'm going to be the one to replace them. I'm twenty-four, for Christ's sake. It was a lot for me to handle. I'm still trying to grasp it, now." Memories of nights of locked room doors, of meditations and shadows and screens, of invisible lines and spectres. Dreams. Looking down in perspective.
The new guy doesn't respond. He stares down, fidgeting with the capacitor in his pocket, averting my gaze.
Swallowing, I continue. "I think part of what helped me — part of learning how to cope — part of it was, well, kind of knowing that there's always going to be someone there for you. That's kind of what being here is about. We all have our levels, but knowing where to find them is good."
"Maybe you've been through a lot," he says. He stands to leave. "But don't talk to me like I haven't."
"The Foundation- "
"Your Foundation. Not mine. This place is falling apart from the inside out, and you don't know the slightest thing about fixing it."
Jorge can't keep it in. "Whose side are you on, anyway? The way you're talking, I'm starting to think it's not ours."
"We walk in the same direction," says the new guy, "but it doesn't mean we're walking the same road. You want to know where I come from? Maybe you've heard of it. The ICSUT - "
Realisation dawns. Jorge balks. "The International Center… "
"… for the Study of Unified Thaumatology," I finish. The name winds up tight in my throat, as if I'm finding myself subconsciously eliding it, trying to invoke it without its power.
Dr. Lim seems to notice my discomfort. He nods. "You've done your research."
"You're Coalition," hisses Jorge.
"Your Foundation is ill-equipped to face what's to come," the doctor declares. "Two-six-nine-six is growing stronger. It's not learning, in any sense of the word, but it's adapting, and it's growing more numb. The house's defenses, spectacular as they are, will not hold forever. And you laypeople with your mantras and colouring books won't be enough to stop her when she escapes."
"And you say you are?" I glower. "You say you're enough? Lifting bits of metal into the air?"
"Specific technical assistance." He looks at me, determined, eyes narrow. "Yes."
"Well, I can't say that you're bad at it," scoffs Jorge. He takes his empty plate and rises to his feet. "But if you think that's all it takes — then dear doctor, you've got a long, long way to go."
We draw straws — really, a stick of spaghetti bent into two — and I'm the one to go. Jorge says he's got maintenance to do, anyway. "Doesn't matter what the new guy says," he reasons. "I'm still the engineer." By the time I've stacked the dishes in the pantry, he's disappeared into the basement, with a brick pulled under the hatch, leaving it open a crack.
I give the metal a kick. "You know Charlie'd chew you out for that."
"The light's a little better this way," Jorge calls from below. "I'm just running electronics. You won't fry."
"It's not me I'm worried about," I call back, sliding the brick out from the hatch. Far as I can tell from the lack of the telltale electrothaumic hum, he's not lying. But the hatch is shielded for another reason — the ARad sensors are as delicate as they are powerful, and leaving the basement open is like shining a lit candle on a pair of night-vision goggles. "Last I checked, basement supercomputers don't come cheap." I ease the hatch down between my fingers, and leave Jorge cursing in the dark.
Next, to find Jo.
The hut is not a big place. I peek into her room and Rao's. I peer into the armoury and its locker rows. I call into the bathroom, push at the door with my foot — unlocked, empty. I stick my head up onto the roof. I check back in the pantry and foyer, just in case. That's when I catch Rao, sitting cross-legged on the couch, his eyes focused for the first time in weeks. "You're awake?" I ask. "We never heard you."
He stares serenely at me, the sides of his face lifting into a smile. "The worst is over," he says. "You are looking for Jo?"
I walk to him, mentally ticking off the checks Jo taught me: any signs of paralysis? Are his pupils still dilated? Fingers against his neck: cool, but not cold. "Thank god you're fine. I'm just about the check the garage for her."
At this, he lifts his hand and grasps my wrist, and I feel his skin crinkle like paper. I lean back, letting him pull himself to his feet. "Something to show you," he says, answering a question I never asked. All in all, a good sign. He moves with the certainty of one half his age, almost dragging me to the side door, where he pushes open with his shoulder. The truck's gone, with no sign of Jo.
Rao raises his hand. "Fourth door," he says. I ignore him and go to the logbook at the workbench, noting the last checkout time: six-forty-five. Without Charlie, four hours would've been plenty of time for a walk. "Did she tell you why?" I ask.
"Fourth door," he says again, insistently.
"I'm just worried, that's all." I look up, follow his hand to the row of cabinets at the back. "Why, what's up?"
"Fourth door," he says.
I open it. Inside is a wooden box the size of a human head. I stoop down to pick it up. It's lighter than I expected. The insides rustle with the sound of old paper. I see the edge of a seam, feel the weight of two halves held together with black electrical tape along the sides. I squint into the cracks. "Well, that's certainly not on any of the inventories."
Rao is peering at the box too, his gaze so intense that I wouldn't be surprised if he was looking right through it, sifting through the contents in his mind.
I try to discern his expression. "Jo made this? Is this what you want to tell me?" Upon closer inspection, the box isn't as rigid as it seems, so I set it gently down on the workbench. There's words on the top, but nothing arcane, only labels; and something like a circuit diagram with the familiar Foundation-exclusive symbols: the I-S-I of a thaum capacitor, the spiralling dietheric gate.
Rao lifts his right index finger and traces the wires and kinks. Straight line down, curve left. Cutting through the dietheric gates, a large circle. "Jo," he mouths.
"I take it that's a yes." Next to prescience, Rao's lucidity grants him a near-pathological monism, the art of seeing answers in all things, viewing the world within the world. Jorge thinks it's bunk, and so did I. Allegedly, it was part of the first batch's conditioning, all those years ago, in a blend of controlled DMT trips and neo-Vedanticism: the spontaneous generalising of patterns anywhere, everywhere, so as to hold infinite variations of workings within one's finite mind. It's why Charlie claims their memories are so good.
"Open it," says Rao. He points at the sides where the tape is less crinkled. With the tips of my nails, I manage to peel enough off to open the top like a lid.
"It's a machine," I gasp.
Not in any traditional sense of the word. A layman would think it a beehive — stacks of wood, hexagon-lined, fitted together into a kind of interwoven box. On a closer look, I make out words: Greek, with letters like the legs of little ants, running up and down the lines. The potent kind: Biblical Koine. Jo's lingua arcana of choice; of course, Rao was right after all.
[[tab 2]]
I find Jo in the garage.
She looks up, blinks. "Mol. Is something wrong?" There's a blankness in her voice, like she's just paged in from a long way away. Something spell-related, going by her dilated pupils.
"Well," I begin, but the rest of my sentence fails to connect.
You look like you've something to say, so you might as well finish it.
"Okay, well, whatever you're doing looks a little more important, and I don't think I should intrude… "
"No, no. It's all good. It's just a little something me and Charlie are testing. Nothing fancy. Help me load it in the truck, will you?"
Anyway — you were saying?
"Ah." I look down. Something something. "I was wondering when Charlie gets back."
He didn't tell you? Probably in eight to nine hours. I'm sure whatever business he has will be done by then.
What kind of business?
Documentation, mostly. I think Tannenbaum's interested in the data that our sensors collected during the breach. Of course, the numbers get sent by satellite, but to actually make sense of the data, you know… Plus, we're classified, remember?
He's been gone quite a while. Are you sure he's just running some slides? He left at four in the morning.
It's not like Site-20's right next door.
Laugh. It's the closest thing we have to next door.
I wouldn't worry if I were you. Maybe he's gone to resup. Can't blame him for that.
Yeah. I guess not.
You sound like you really need him for something.
Oh, it's fine. I'll catch him when he comes back.
You do that. She digs in the back of the truck for the pocket radio, turns the dial on its head. Static squawks to life. Here, catch.
Look, call me if you need something. This won't take but half an hour.
What are you going to do?
Testing something near the house. Comms check, one two. I'll be in the orange zone, so you don't have to worry too much, okay?
If you say so. Action. Stay safe!
She yells back a reply, inaudible in the blare of the truck's engines.
- intermission
- the machine's background
- Charlie feature
"Forty-six days," sings Jorge. A-minor, C, G. He's not the best player when he's sober — his left hand clamps the bridge of the guitar with a leper's grip, and the fingers of his right hand skip the low-E when he strums. "Forty-six days since the walls came down. Ever wonder how long we've got before the next one?"
I stifle a giggle. "Don't jinx it. Breach events aren't some kind of contest."
Together, we appraise the sunset from the roof. It's a fine kind of day, when the air is like the edge of a comb, and if I squint my eyes I can see the sun as a pale circle, white-on-off-white. It hangs in the space above the moorline, low but not quite setting, a little over halfway there. It's 3 p.m.; already, in September, the days are getting shorter. Between us, Rao sits, staring into his personal sunset. His body rocks back and forth, moving to a tune unheard, one beyond the reach of Jorge's amateur strumming. But as the music stops, so does he.
"I'll bet there's something in the house for jinxes," Jorge says, at length. "You know what we found the last time."
"The kids?" I take a sip of my drink. "You told me about the kids. Keep playing."
Jorge clears his throat. "Two dead kids and a lady in a gown… " He strums a few more times, clumsy F-C-G-pause, until his fingertips syncopate with the chords in a rough-shod, beginner's beat. "You know the chandelier in the foyer? The one we never found a use for?"
"Mm? Charlie told me it wasn't part of the original building."
"Not technically, but it was still Rosyth's. When Rao channeled that beam through the front door, some of the excess ARad went into the lights. Better the house than him, yeah?"
Jorge nods at the man, who has begun to rock again, his shawl now flapping in the light breeze. I reach over and adjust it with a tighter half-knot. "Hey, hey. You alright?"
If he has noticed me, he shows no sign of it. I slide my fingers around the back of his neck and gently massage the points where Charlie's showed me, loosening the knots of muscle. His skin's still warm, so he's good for now. "Jesus Christ. All of that and he was out for, what, a week?"
"Well, Jo's told you that he's seen worse." He shifts his grip, tries for a different chord, fails. Probably an E, from the sound. "Mierda — let's try again."
F-C-G-pause. F-C-G-pause. Rhythm, fingertips on wood and metal, finding percussion and purchase. "Forty-six days since the walls came down… "
"Speaking of which," I offer, "Jo — have you talked to her yet?"
Jorge frowns. "The room's not been right. She's been in a mood lately. Haven't you seen?"
"Chrissake, we live together. How hard can it be to just — talk?"
"Ask yourself. One of us has got to talk. Didn't you approach her just now?" Over this, his fingers continue, fingers on metal. F-C-G-pause, F-C-G- skraaaang. "Mierda" he curses under his breath, and starts again from the F. "Anyway, you're a woman, she's a woman — better you than me, no?"
I bat him in the side with my bottle. "Oi. You've been here for longer." He continues playing, undeterred. F-C-G. His left hand climbs the bridge, recollecting variations of fingering, collecting again: F-C-G, F-C-G-E. At the unexpected cadence, I smile. "I know, I know. We've both been here long enough. It's just — ugh, you know?" I pick up my drink and pipette what's left of the beer out with my straw. "Rao, any ideas?"
Serene as always, Rao's body moves, his mind in places unknown. Jorge shrugs mid-strum. "He's in the zone."
"Naturally," I sigh, putting my drink down. It clinks on the roof's concrete and almost topples, but I steady it just in time. Jorge chuckles, strumming even louder. I scowl. "Here, gimme before you wake the lady."
"Never!" he laughs. "Forty-six days since the walls came down… "
I groan. "See, now you've jinxed it. Gimme." He passes it over, reluctantly. I
- bonding
- singing
- hey, what's that in the -
- oh my god. the house -
- Jo.
Forty-six days since the walls came down
Two dead kids and a lady in a gown
There's jinxes in the floorboards, jinxes in the ground
But up here, we're safe
And sound
When Charlie comes back, his suit is caked with dirt. "Bad luck," he says, wiping his arms down his sides. "Counting the damage from the storm, that's a total of four monitors we're going to need replacing. Does Command know we need more wires?"
"Jo's on it," I answer, barely looking up from my work. I script a test pattern over a fresh band of sigil paper and clip the trodes to either end, worming the ends into another set of nodes in the machine. 3, 2, 1, fire, I will. The test pattern flickers. I put a check in my notebook, and prepare to wire up the next node pair. "You said you fixed it?"
"I think it's a pretty good fix." He tramps over to where I'm seated on the couch, setting down a clear plastic box on the tabletop besides the new machine. Inside are four stacks of sigil tags, newly inscribed and bound with rubber bands. "Had to make do with it the manual way. Sensor glyphs. These here are self-sustaining, but very fragile — the moment anything happens on the perimeter, they'll decay, and their sister tags here'll pick it up and flare. You recognise those, yeah?"
"Kind of, yeah," I mutter, setting down my tools. Another spot test. Charlie's been keen on those lately, ever since the last breach. Not that I minded, after all; it's a good step up from meditating and shadowing in the basement. Jo must've put him up to it, after that night.
"Prove it," he says. "Trace the other end for me."
I try to remember those hours in the dark room with the tracing paper. With my left hand, I trace a quick doubled plait on the tabletop, trailing off at the end: "… and then it connects to the sensor pattern you have, that, uh, I don't think we've covered yet?"
He snorts. "Good enough, kid. Now, how do you set this up?"
I rack my brain, recalling schematics I can barely comprehend. "Um, you said the monitors were overloaded, so there's no drawing power from them, but I think the antenna can still pick stuff up? Because they don't run on the main battery? Hook them up to both ends of the sensor glyph… "
Charlie grins. "Not bad, but not needed. These things generate their own field — pay attention. They're leftover from whoever cast them, but they won't leak for a week as long as they're kept apart from anything live. Now, how do you separate this from something live in the field?"
"You, uh, put some kind of shielding relay? Class-three wards, arrange in a pentagon- "
"Too much, not needed," he laughs. "They're not people or circuits, they're tags. You chuck them in one of those plastic lunchboxes Jo keeps bringing back, bury them under two inches of dirt at our monitor points." He gets to his feet, mud flaking off his flanks. "Moral of the story, kid. Don't overengineer something if you don't know how it works."
I gulp. "Yes sir."
"Alright." He picks the plastic box up. "That thing you're working on — that the package you were talking about?"
"Yeah. A courier dropped this from HQ and left. He said it wasn't urgent, but Jo told me to do a general diagnostic first."
"Looks like it's from Engineering," he scowls. "What's this got to do with us?"
I shrug. "Ask Jo, she said she'll brief us over lunch."
"If she says so. Last question: you seen Jorge or the new guy? One of them's got to help me wire this up to the basement." He shakes the lunchbox of tags.
"Jorge's on roof. New guy's silent. I thought you hated overengineering."
Charlie laughs again. "Past a point, it's called redundancy. You'll learn the difference, kid." And then he's off, tramping off more little bits of mud behind him.
Lessons, lessons. I wire up the test pattern, plug it into another set of nodes. Fire, flicker. Check. Fire, flicker. Check. Fire, flicker. Check. Whatever's wrong with the strange machine, it isn't hardware: all the connections seem to be firing just fine. Perhaps they need our expertise after all.
Before long, my watch beeps 12. The sound of several doors swinging. Jorge and Charlie's heavy footsteps come up the basement hatch; Jo's muted ones echo down the hall. I glance at my watch, and get to my feet.
"They left this for us from Site-28," begins Jo. "Not quite what we expected, but it seems our more technically-oriented brethren across the pond need our help."
She's seated at the head of what passes as our family table, two army-surplus fold-away tables draped with clear plastic sheeting. There's only me, Charlie, and Jorge here. Rao's still finding his mind since the last breach, and the new guy's sulky as always. They aren't missing much anyway, since Charlie isn't cooking.
So lunch today is a reheated, mostly-canned affair. Baked beans, sardines on toast. Jo's already finished, her mess tin pushed to the side. Where it was is now a stack of yellowed printouts bearing the official HQ letterhead, clearance headlined in red: ECRG/3-2409. SCP report, for our eyes only.
("That means yours, too," Jorge told me as we sat down, and not without a little bit of pride.)
"2409," observes Charlie. Jo's his second, so he sits on her right; he's already skimmed through the entire report between bites. "I knew a couple guys from that one. That's the Brogan case, pretty famous one. They did damned well to name the device after her — damned well, considering what it's cost us trying to recall it."
Jo nods. "Long story short, they fielded one of our modulator's precursors back in the 20s, when they were still figuring all of this technology out. It's much like a Swiss-army knife of automated spellcasting: load it up, point it in the right direction, keep it running, keep it clean. They sealed off this building in New York using it — simple zero-access spell, like the one on the House's front door. Trouble is, it's not working as it should, and whatever's contained inside seems to be making HQ very nervous."
Jorge raises his hand, swallows hard, clears his throat. "So why now? Why get us to repair grandfather tech?"
"Three reasons," says Jo. "Number one, it's a software problem. We aren't privy to whatever's sealed in there, but apparently HQ's got the gist that the zero-access spell isn't working as it should. There are cracks, literally."
She fans out the paper, showing the attached addenda: segments of brickwork with faults running straight through them, artificial-colour overlays depicting ARad leaks. I recognise the colour from my night in the basement — dark brown, the colour of contamination.
Charlie catches me staring. "Overengineering," he grunts.
Jo continues. "As Charlie would know, the Brogan device is notoriously bull-headed when it comes to executing its programmed instructions. It's barricaded the site, but it's putting extreme strain on the rest of the building. HQ is worried that if they don't diagnose the problem in time, the ectoentropy from the Brogan alone is enough to tear the place apart."
Charlie nods. "We've got Brogan components in our custom Mark-IV's. There's a reason ours are set permanently for aetheric use only."
"The second problem," carries on Jo, "is that they can't physically access the old device anymore. It's concealed beneath a layer of brickwork when they put the original false front in, but its own spatial distortion has complicated any further maintenance measures."
Jorge raises his hand again. "Can't they try to access it remotely? Our modulators are sympathetic; if the wiring's anything alike, theirs should be, too."
"You're absolutely right." Jo flips the documents to the last page: a schematic, done mostly in pen, detailing cycles of symmetry and reinforcement acting on a familiar-looking piece of thaumic circuitry. "And that," she continues, "is why they've sent us their little science project to work on. Mol, are you done with the diagnostics?"
"The hardware's working fine," I tell her. "So that's what it is? They've sent us a copy of their hardware so we can figure out how to reverse-engineer their magical cock-up."
Charlie beams. "Spot test, kid. Tell us how."
I bite my lip, putting two and two together. "It's like a backup system, yes? Like how our modulator web's supposed to back each other up when a single unit goes down, because the same working's running on all two-hundred-fifty-six of them. If we properly program a working zero-access — and, since they've sent us the ARad readouts, we should also find out what's wrong with theirs — if we get it right, then they can use our unit to resonate with the cock-up, and maybe hold it out for a little while longer… "
"Attagirl." Charlie nods. "Keep up the pace and you'll take over in no time."
"We're on active deployment, though. Doesn't Engineering have better things to do?" Jorge asks.
"Let me finish," snaps Jo over the rest of us. "There's their third reason. They've got the hard skills, but we've got the soft skills — sigil programming, working diagnostics, active thaumaturgy. Jorge, no offense to your former employers, but they're not exactly the brightest at spell reworking."
"And no offense to us, but we're not exactly always running around with our heads on fire like our other more active partners," adds Charlie. "We've got time."
"We've got work to do," protests Jorge. "Perimeter's still broken, no? We aren't fixing it until HQ sends more parts. And there's no guarantee we can take on the next breach with Rao on standby. Jo, there just isn't time for this."
"Wait," I tell him. Jo's holding her head up with a look on her face, a look I've never seen her have before. I look at Charlie. He seems to have it figured out, too, looking like when he's waiting for me to finish up something he's already figured out. "Wait, wait. Jo, you're not saying - "
"Two birds, one stone," interrupts Charlie. "We don't have to send back the Brogan — just our calculations."
"Exactly," Jo finishes. "The perimeter can wait. Rao can recover. But if we reprogram this thing?"
I finally figure it out: her expression isn't grave, it's triumphant. She hasn't looked like that since I arrived, probably hasn't looked like that in a year.
"Theta-seventy-seven," declares Jo, eyebrows arched, arms on her hips, "we have got one fancy mother of a fucker in our hands."
At first glance, I thought it was a beehive. Stacks of wood, hexagon-lined, fitted together into a kind of interwoven box. On a closer look, I made out words: Greek, with letters like the legs of little ants, running up and down the lines. Rao was with me then, squatting on the garage floor, eyes intently scanning the construct. "Jo is making a very good machine," he whispered to me. He seemed to have been staring at it for a while.
"What do they mean?" By that time I'd already trained enough to know a significant sigil from a mere scribble. A proper working, to the properly-conditioned mind, is something prickling to the eyes to read, or prickling to the mind; it engenders a kind of mental gooseflesh. That's what I got when I traced the hexagons with my eyes.
Rao continued staring, his face expressionless. His left hand picked at his ear, and he rocked back and forth slightly on his heels. Then he stopped. "Mirrors," he decided at last. "These are many mirrors."
"Oh? What're they reflecting?"
He didn't reply. His eyes continued scanning the surface of the wood. At length, he began to pick at his ear again. Then he resumed rocking back and forth on his heels. I squinted, trying to see beyond the gooseflesh, trying to see as he saw. It's enough to know whether a working is a working. But to really run it through, really emulate it in your mind, feeling what its composer invented — that's a different kind of game.
"Wonder what it's for?" I rub my eyes, refocusing my mind's eye. Is it just busywork? After all, Charlie's got his hunts, and Jorge's got his knits.
But when Jo goes into full prep mode, it's not something you can brush off as easily. I've seen enough of her stencilling tags late into the night, or checking and re-checking our vests before a run, and that's the feeling I get now, that same minute intensity. I can imagine her eyes like diamond flicking over these labyrinths. Fingers tracing glyphs, optimising algorithms. And the machine itself, layer by layer, coming into form. A labour of love.
Rao shakes his head presciently. "Not love. Fear."
Do not edit other writers' sandboxes without permission.
