Zero Sight (37 page)

I kept glancing across the field as I ran. The gunmen were urging the mage to hurry up and try again. “Keep him distracted, fellas,” I whispered to myself. “Buy me some time.” The men were shooting themselves in the foot. You can’t rush magic. It’s like yelling at a guy who’s trying to sink a putt.

I wanted to stay well back behind the tree line, but I figured I needed to get within fifty yards. I couldn’t trust my accuracy beyond that point. Thankfully there was a light breeze. The rustling leaves and thickening fog helped mask my footfalls. My heart was racing. My last encounter with a mage using an artificial conduit had left both my hands covered in third-degree burns. I was going to have to manage better than that. More importantly, I needed that image out of my head before I started casting.

I crawled the last ten yards through the brush. I did it as quietly as I could manage. (I didn’t have any desire to attract the attention of five AK-forty-somethings.) Reaching my range, I brushed away the matted leaves and smoothed out the dirt. With a shaky finger I drew three circles touching at three points. It was time to show Jules what I had learned.

I closed my eyes. I struggled to clear my mind, but the memory of my scorched hands interfered with my focus. I grimaced. Time was running out. No one would be alerted until Jules could set off the fire alarms, and Jules wasn’t going anywhere if I couldn’t distract them. I cursed. The image of my scorched hands wouldn’t go away. My adrenalin, mixed with the prospects of facing another ACT wielding mage, was causing too much interference. I couldn’t clear my head. The need for focus cut both ways. My opponent was getting distracted by his squadmates; I was getting distracted by my demons.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself. Why was I trying to
suppress
the flashback? I could work
with
it. I did the mental calculus in my head. I’d never tried a spell like this one before, but there was no reason I couldn’t use magic like it was a chemistry set, right? I built up the extraction fields one at a time. I rushed the job, sloshing mana into them with reckless abandon. I could afford to be sloppy. Causing a mess was the whole point.

The three circles charged, I turned to the transmutations. Transmutations are formed using mental images. The images must be vivid. The more senses you draw on the better. In
Magic Theory I
, Professor Greenberg recommended choosing three distinct images that shared the desired trait. That way, distinct aspects of each individual memory wouldn’t interfere with the desired effect. I chose carefully. For the first point, I thought back to the dry air of my home, the slow wheeze of gas as the tube fed my lungs in the hospital, and the first gasping breath I drew after nearly drowning with Sadie. For the second point, I thought of the smell of auto repair shops, my failed attempts to fix an old dirt bike, and the time I was siphoning fuel and it squirted straight into my mouth. For the third point, I thought of cheap coffee cups, the excitement of opening a package, and the mess Victor’s dog made when he tore through his bedding.

Done, I crept away from my work. Like a tree house made by an eight year old, my casts were totally unstable. I didn’t dare breathe on them. Fortunately, all that was left was to prime the reaction. I turned my attention to the darkness at the center of the cascade. I thought of my hands griping the pipe. The swing. The shock. I thought of my flesh instantly charred through. I let the panic rush over me. The smell of burning flesh returned to my nostrils. The horrendous waves of heat-stoked pain raked my veins. With a grunt, I pushed it all into the final cast.

The formulation quivered, the components teetering like dominos. Only the slightest nudge and the spell would go off. I was sweating from exhaustion. The strain from the seven casts was taking its toll. I flipped up the hood of my robe, tucked my hands into its long sleeves, and took in three deep breaths. What I was about to set off was extremely dangerous. It might even kill some of the men. But anything less risked Jules’ safety. She would be running across open ground—and the men had machine guns. They couldn’t be allowed to open fire.

My hands shook from the adrenalin. This was the first time I’d ever faced a decision like this. I stared past the men to IKΛM. About forty friends and neighbors were about to die in an explosion. It was an easy call. I gave my cascade a nudge—and I ran like hell.

I could feel the air begin to suck inward as sprinted, and I strained to pick up my pace. One of the men shouted, and a round zipped past my ear. My bladder tried to empty. I looked back to see three of them running in my direction. Flashes were bursting from their muzzles, but that was fine with me. Those were three fewer guns trained at Jules. She was going to have a chance; I just hoped she didn’t freeze up.

I first realized I’d used too much mana when I noticed I was flying through the air. That clack and roar arrived later, as I slid through a sloppy pile of leaves. I curled up into a ball, cowering under my heavy robe. They said the robes were fire retardant; I was about to put that claim to the test. I turned to face the men. Instead, I found an inferno. The trees where I once stood were fully engulfed. All around me, small fires were erupting. The gunmen were in chaos. Screams filled the air. Two men were on fire. The first was trying to get his shirt off, his arms coated in a flaming gel. The second was fully engulfed. He tried to stop, drop, and roll.

It won’t help
, I thought guiltily.
Napalm doesn’t work that way.

The mage in black wasn’t faring any better. Distracted mid-cast, his translocation had malfunctioned. Some property of the half-opened portal had been altered. Rebounding casts could be nasty; Jules had warned me about that. The severity of the rebound depended on the amount of mana you spent. Tearing into space had required a ton of energy, energy that very much didn’t want to be compressed. Question was, what would happen now that it’d been freed?

Staying low in the leaves, I focused my Sight. The gate’s borders were vibrating with unstable energies, but a massive flow of mana continued to conduit through the mage into the gate. My mysterious adversary was struggling against some unseen force, one that was contracting the space between him and the gate. The mage dug his heels into the ground. He seemed very disinclined to let the blue fringes of the gate touch him. But why was he being drawn toward the gate in the first place? I had never read about anything like that before. Miscasts tended to cut manaflows; they didn’t normally increase them. Plus, no one else was affected. Only the mage was getting pulled in.

A red shimmer caught my eye.

The ACT device!

The ACT device was pulling him by the neck. It was dragging him towards the gate like a high-powered magnet. But why? I knew next to nothing about how artificial conduits worked. Since that conversation between Rei and Albright, I’d only heard whispers. I lay in the leaves, transfixed by the scene. Of the three men who were chasing me, two were burning, and one was struggling to his feet, dazed. Another two stood next the gate and argued about what to do about the mage. They seemed very disinclined to touch him. I looked in the direction of where Jules was lying in wait. I couldn’t see her. She must have made her move…at least there was that.

The mage in black cried out in frustration. He was losing his battle with the gate. I wondered what would happen when his flesh touched the angry blue vibrations.

Three more feet and I’d find out.

I shook my head. I had caused this fiery nightmare. Two men might already be dead. A third was being dragged to his death. I was shocked by how easy it had been. I had the trap up in less than thirty seconds—and using only my hands. Roaches vs. Raid. They hadn’t even seen it coming. The lopsided odds made me feel a bit dirty. Shouldn’t I have given them a fairer shake?

A tree, fully engulfed, crashed to the ground. What an incredible amount of power. Through my disgust, past my shock, I found that part of me wanted to keep watching. This was my creation—the embodiment of all my fears and doubts turned back against my enemies. My mouth was watering. My heart was racing. I swallowed. Watching this terrible scene unfold was…stars above…it was making me
excited
.

A little part of my brain told me that there were important things to attend to. People were in danger. My people. I needed to help evacuate the dorms, I needed to help protect my friends—but those concerns seemed rather trivial. Something vastly more important was unfolding right in front of me. These three months of training had been so dull. So empty. They had lulled me to sleep. I had stopped paying attention to that fuzz gnawing at the back of my skull, that little voice that told me I was off course. That I had somehow lost my way…

With one last snatch at the grass, the mage in black smacked into the vibrating wall.

He screamed in anguish; I sighed with relief.

When I was a little boy, I knew this kid named Frank. Frank liked to kill bugs. Frank liked killing bugs so much that he spent whole mornings on his belly with his boy scout issue emergency magnifying glass burning ant after ant into oblivion. He said if you listened hard enough, you could even hear them scream.

One day I was playing at Frank’s house. We goofed around in the pool, ate lunch, and watched some TV. Even then I hated TV. TV gave me headaches. TV burned my eyes. So I was relieved when Frank got bored and flicked off the migraine box. He bounced off the couch and said he had an idea.

One other thing about Frank: Frank had a computer. He was the only one of my friends that did. And so when he said he wanted to show me a website, I got really excited. I never got to surf the web; I really wanted to give it a try. The site in question was dedicated to pictures of dead bodies. You clicked on each link, and a photo loaded slowly from top to bottom. The delay gave you time to anticipate the horror as it crawled across the screen. I knew we were doing something sorta bad by visiting it, but I told myself that no one was getting hurt. After all, we weren’t
doing
anything. We were just
looking
.

Frank took me through the photos one-by-one. He paused on the ones he liked. Offered commentary. There were mutilated people, shot people, stabbed people, burnt people, and suicides galore. There was even a video of a monk setting himself on fire. Poured gasoline right on his freakin’ head and everything.

On and on they went. Looking at all the strange scenes made me feel funny. They didn’t look real. They looked like big practical jokes. Still, seeing so many of them made me feel queasy. I kinda wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to be uncool. What if Frank told everyone I chickened out?
Even at that age, I knew I couldn’t let
that
happen. So
I stuck it out. I looked at every photo. Laughed when Frank laughed. Smiled when Frank smiled. Still, when Frank said we had arrived at the last photo, I felt relieved. Looking at the pictures made me feel sorta tired.

Frank said that the last photo was his favorite. That he liked saving it for last. It was titled, “Man Run Over by Tank,” but as the picture loaded, I frowned. The image didn’t make sense. It looked like a photo of a big fat dog-log someone had stepped in. The features didn’t register. It was all just mush…and then I found the eyes. My brain did the rest. Features clicked into place. The skin, the cheeks, the bones, the lips…they were all there if you looked for them. It struck me like a sledgehammer. This paste had once been a man—a living breathing man—and now he was nothing but a pair of eyes looking up at me through a pile of goo. I gagged. It was a total mockery of the human form. Bones lay twisted and broken. Innards squirted about like jelly. A mockery of life.

I could hear my heart pounding off the inside of my skull. Sweat beaded on my skin. Overwhelmed, I did the only thing I could do. I ran. I ran out of the room. I ran down the stairs. I ran straight out the door. I sprinted block after block in a daze. I don’t even recall breathing. Home, I hid under my blankets for hours. No matter what I did, that puddle of a man refused to leave. He hid under my eyelids and visited my dreams. I pictured friends crushed just like him. My father. Santa Claus. The President. That life was that fragile—that my life was that fragile—it shattered me. I never talked to Frank again. I turned straight around every time I saw him. I couldn’t forgot how he sat there smiling as I ran from the room.

There’s actually a term for what I saw. It’s called getting pulped. And as the mage in black struck that malfunctioning gate, I watched a man get pulped before my eyes. He went feet first. It gave him plenty of time to scream. In a matter of seconds, the gate had chewed through his feet, carved up his calves, and ground through his knees. A puddle of steaming human goop gathered below. The vibrating orifice’s inner workings groaned in protest. It was as though his body was gumming up the works. The entire process slowed.
Like putting too much paper in a shredder.
To my horror, I was forced to suppress a giggle. The mage’s screams ended. Crimson streams of blood leaked from his mouth and nose. I glanced down at his guts. The gate was processing them into a cloud of steam and sludge. The mage’s arms shuddered and went limp. His eye sockets oozed a grayish jelly. The gate had crunched halfway through his chest, the mage was dead ten times over, but still the mana continued to flow. It didn’t stop until the pendant finished its grim procession to the gate. The conduit shattered the instant the two met. The gate imploded, and with a pop and a fizz, the red jewel burst into flames. What was left of the mage’s torso splattered into the puddle of flesh below.