Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (21 page)

That meant that the burden and exertion of traveling around the world fell squarely on Thomas's team. Morgan could rest until they entered a place holding a real sign.

They had visited six cities already, and it was clear that the vagabond plan had already been countered by the Azure Guards. It was all right, because they didn't have a true sign to find. Doctor Franco just wanted to find out more about how Morgan was tracking them, and they still had no clue.

“Let's go home,” Bolswaithe said as they drove away in the van. Tony wanted to take the L'invincibile, but the ATV looked more like a tank than a car, and the Doctor didn't want to attract undue attention. Plus, Babcor hadn't finished repairing Thomas's car, so they were stuck again with a minivan for transportation.

“How does he do it?” Tony bashed his head against Thomas's headrest. “It's driving me nuts! How are we going to get anything done?”

“We'll find a way,” Bolswaithe said.

“I'm sure it's some kind of Magic,” Elise said. “I just know it.”

“It's been more than a year of this. We can't go after the signs without Morgan popping up, and meanwhile he can do whatever he wants!” Tony continued. “The home team is losing.”

They kept quiet until they entered the Mansion grounds. “We are done, right?” Tony opened the door. “I'll be with my brainiac friends in engineering if you need me.”

“And I'll be in my column,” Henri said as he opened the backdoor, the van shaking as he stepped off.

“We will find a way,” Bolswaithe told them. “I'm sure.”

“We have an option,” Thomas told Elise and Bolswaithe. “The Man in the Trench Coat.” Thomas had thought about him and what he had said for a long time.

“The Dark Dealmaker?” Bolswaithe said. “That’s how he’s known by the Fauns. They also try to stay away from him.”

Dark Dealmaker
. Thomas remembered the Man very well—his thin, tall body and bald head, his eyes rimmed in black and long, unkempt hands and nails. It was a fitting nickname.

“He's not a man, Thomas,” Elise said. “He's something else.”

Thomas had thought long about their first encounter in the library, and then about what he had told them in the League of Nations. His motivations were shrouded in mystery, but the Dealmaker was a creature imbued with powerful Magic. “Exactly,” Thomas said. “He's something more. If Gramps is using Magic, I bet he can tell us what kind it is.”

“I bet he already knows,” Bolswaithe said. “He knew that we would turn to him at some point. It's a trap, Thomas.”

“He's not Azure Guard,” Thomas said. “They wouldn't work with him.”

“Because he's Wraith-touched!” Elise said. “Have you forgotten the library? He worked for Tasha.”

“But he's also worked for the Guardians. In the
Book of Beasts,
he helped Ibn Battuta destroy a Wraith incursion.” Thomas had extensively searched for references of the Dealmaker with the help of Oscar. He was always a double agent, thriving on favors. “He's done it throughout history. You know this, Bolswaithe; I sent you all the files we found about him.”

“He's done as much good as he's done evil,” Bolswaithe said. “He's helped the Guardians as much as he has helped our enemies, but most of the time, even when he helped us the results might be considered touched by some evil design. The Doctor would never allow us to ask for his help.”

“Then we don't tell the Doctor until we've spoken with him,” Thomas said.

“I won't be part of that plan,” Bolswaithe said immediately.

“It's our only choice now, Bolswaithe.” Thomas turned to Elise for support.

“It might be, Thomas,” Elise said, “but we can't just go. We need to tell the Doctor about it.”

“Come on,” Thomas, pleaded. “The Doctor will say no.”

“Still, we have to tell him.” Bolswaithe was adamant. “I'm not going to just take off like that.”

“You said you were gonna help me, Bolswaithe!” Thomas yelled.

“And I will, but not like this.”

“I can order you to do it.” Thomas pulled out his big card. Everything Mr. Pianova said was true—everyone worked for him!

Bolswaithe locked his gaze. “Are you ordering me to help you, sir?” Bolswaithe asked. His face had become blank, devoid of emotion.

“Thomas!” Elise said. “Stop it! Bolswaithe is not just a robot! He's our friend; don't turn him into just a machine.”

Thomas bit his lip. He knew that if he ordered Bolswaithe directly, Bolswaithe would have to obey him, but then he would be betraying their friendship. Bolswaithe would no longer be his friend and companion, but his servant, and Thomas wasn't going to go there.

“No, I'm not,” Thomas said. “I'm sorry for saying that.”

Bolswaithe showed relief. “Don't worry, Thomas.”

“Okay, we'll tell him,” Thomas gave in, “but you know what the Doctor is going to say about this.”

“We'll find out right now,” Bolswaithe said. “I just sent all the files on the Man in the Trench Coat to him and what he told us in the League of Nations. He wants to review the information and then see us in his office in two hours.”

“Bolswaithe!” Thomas said. “I would've liked to go and tell him myself!”

“But then he would have felt trapped, Thomas,” Bolswaithe said, “and would have surely said no. This way he can review the findings, and it looks as if we had thought about this for a long time. Instead of...” Bolswaithe’s voice trailed off.

“It being a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Thomas finished the thought. “You're right. He wouldn't even have thought about it.”

“You're welcome,” Bolswaithe said with a smile.

***

“First off…” the Doctor said from behind his desk, “let me congratulate you on this very comprehensive investigation. It’s one of the best research projects I've seen in a long time.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Tony said. Thomas had brought Tony up to speed just ten minutes before their meeting with the Doctor, because he knew that Tony would call them crazy, exactly as he did just outside the Doctor's door. He also drilled him about keeping that the idea of visiting the Dealmaker was an old one. In case the Doctor read his mind.

“That said,” the Doctor continued, “I'd like to know why you kept this information from me until now.”

Tony elbowed Thomas, but Bolswaithe was the one who answered. “We didn't even consider it an option until after the Falls, sir.”

“I see,” the Doctor said. “And you see this as an option now, Bolswaithe?”

“I do, sir. Yes,” Bolswaithe answered without a pause.

“I did some research of my own.” The Doctor turned toward the screens at the back of his desk. There were many images of the Dark Dealmaker throughout the ages. “I'm sure that you know he had many dealings with Tasha,” he said. “And that he's not a full Wraith, but he's, let's say, Wraith-touched.”

“We know. It's a calculated risk. Let's say 50-50,” Thomas said, echoing what Oscar had told him.

“50-50?” the Doctor asked. “50-50 what?”

Thomas wasn't going to echo the “triumph or death” Oscar had told him, so he said, “Fifty percent chance that he helps us, and fifty percent chance that he doesn't.” 

“I don't like those odds,” the Doctor said.

“It's better than the one hundred percent chance that Morgan beats us to the signs that we have right now, Doctor,” Tony said. “Perhaps with his help we can begin working again.”

“What makes you think Morgan won't follow you to him?” the Doctor asked.

“He won't, or rather, he can't,” Elise said. “He lives in a place scoured of Magic.”

“Really?” the Doctor asked. “Where? You didn't put that in your report.”

“Because it’s a hunch, Doctor,” Bolswaithe said. “He gave us a clue as he vanished.”

“26
^th
of April, 1986,” Thomas took over the conversation. “Only one thing happened that day that shook the world.”

The Doctor punched in the information and the screens behind him showed pictures of an abandoned city, a monument to technological catastrophe. “Chernobyl,” he said.

“Pripyat,” Bolswaithe added, pointing to the abandoned city on the screen. “The newspaper was from Pripyat.”

The Doctor drew in a long breath. “All right,” he said. “I'll get everything ready. But at the first sign of danger you pull out of Pripyat, you hear me?”

The Wasteland

      Until stepping into the city of Pripyat, Thomas’s concept of solitude had been a walk by the beach, reading a book behind his house in Ohio, or even watching TV by himself while his parents, and later, his Grandpa, were out from the house.

      The word took on a whole new meaning as he walked the overgrown streets of this once young city that housed almost fifty thousand souls before Chernobyl. 

Solitude was the pair of shoes abandoned by the side of the street; a bike, its wheels flat and its frame corroded neatly parked against a wall; the buildings, once homes for the population, stared at them with dusty windows and broken glass. Vines crept along the sides of the walls, and trees grew on the rooftops and even inside some structures.

Solitude was walking through a modern city built for thousands of people, with schools, hospitals, apartments, cars, and monuments, and realizing that everything humanity could do was useless without any people to use it.

Chernobyl hadn’t been the first or last nuclear disaster. Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had the honor of being the first, but while it had caused much concern, it had been relatively low-key and the authorities gained control of the reactor.

Chernobyl had been the first to cause real damage in a large scale though, and most of Europe was affected in some way by the fallout from the nuclear accident and an exclusion zone of thirty kilometers around the nuclear plant had been established. The young city of Pripyat had been built in 1970 to house the power plant workers and their families. It was located just three kilometers away from the plant, and it had been evacuated with great haste. Most of the population had taken only their papers and very little valuables as they were told that they would be able to return after three days, when in reality it would be thousands of years before the radioactive levels were safe again for humans.

Pripyat had become a monument to the horror of technology gone amuck.

“Are in we in any danger?” Tony asked, breaking the silence.

“Not immediate, only if we stay too long or if we approach the reactor. A couple of entrepreneurs have already set up tours to Pripyat. It’s becoming a ‘Hot Spot’, so to speak, for tourism.” Bolswaithe was checking the radiation counter he was carrying.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked Elise. Her eyes were watery and she wiped her runny nose with a tissue.

“It’s nothing,” she said as two tears ran down her face.

“I feel it too,” Henri told her. “The void.” The grotesque clenched his fists.

“There is no Magic in this place,” Elise told them. “It’s the first time I feel like this. The plants are here, but they aren’t connected.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas asked. He couldn’t sense anything, but he knew there wasn’t an Oracle sign in Pripyat.

“The plants and animals here are alive, but without the magical spark,” Elise told them. “They’re not connected to any of the Pillars.”

It made sense now; the Pillar’s magic permeated the world, especially those that irradiated life Magic, like Ukiah. The power of Magic was completely opposed to technology, and it was only logical that the Chernobyl disaster had scoured the area of all Magic, including that of the Pillars.

Thomas could only sense the Oracle’s magical signature, and other powerful signatures like his grandfather's sword but Elise was a Mage—she used Magic, wielded it, and could sense it all around her. She was visibly affected by the lack of connection to the Pillars, the source of all Magic.

“This place is a wasteland,” Elise said.

“Will you be all right?” Bolswaithe asked. “You want to turn back?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll be fine. It’s just sad.” She cleaned her eyes. “Let’s go.”

They continued down the street. They had entered Pripyat at the intersection between Kurchatova Street and Lenina Avenue. Thomas saw a dilapidated store with the name “Rainbow” etched in the front window. Surely there had been some looters going through the abandoned city, because the floors of the buildings were strewn with paper and debris. Strangely, most of the windows still had their glass intact.

After a couple of minutes there was a beep from Bolswaithe’s wristpadd.  “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Team 17 reports that Morgan has appeared.”

“They’re here?” The last thing Thomas wanted was to face his grandpa’s team. His cheek was almost healed, but it still throbbed a little, and the thin scar was a reminder of Nardir’s hatred for him.

“They’re almost sixty miles away,” Bolswaithe said. “Magic and the portals they could’ve used closer to Pripyat were also destroyed by the radiation. We have teams on the field tracking them.”

“A little room to move,” Tony said.  “So where is this guy?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I guess we’ll know when we find him.”

They kept walking through the city in silence. They went around the hospital and all the way to the amusement park; its Ferris wheel was corroded, but still standing against the clear, blue sky. The gymnasium and the swimming pool were in worse shape though. The wood from the basketball court had all but splintered and decayed, and while the pool still had most of the tiles, the roof cover had completely caved in.

Thomas had seen the hammer and sickle of the old Soviet Republic prominently displayed in many places and on old documents on the floor.

“Do you think he’s in the Palace of Culture?” Bolswaithe asked, but Thomas had just seen something that caught his eye. He approached a dark stain on a wall that seemed out of place. “It’s probably radioactive mold. Some years ago, scientists sent a robot into the reactor and found black mold thriving in the radiation,” Bolswaithe said.

“Life bouncing back,” Elise said. “It survived the Wraith extinctions, and it will survive this.” She smiled. “And it also has the spark of Magic, as tenuous as it may be.”