“So, this was the first place on the map,” I said as we sat at a shaded table across from our target location. “I have Dan going at A-rank, and he’s analyzing the locale. He should be able to dig into the temporal resonance of the place and get us some clues. If not, we move onto the next place. What about the map, you dig up anything interesting?”
Callie shook her head. She was sitting in front of the spread out map Professor Saunders gave us, studying the distribution of incidents. “Not so far,” she frowned. “As far as I can tell, this is entirely random. Then again, I’m not Dan, and collating data isn’t my strong suit. I can calculate spatial density on the fly to the eighteenth integer at this point, but barring some kind of space related formation I don’t see what I’m going to be able to find here.”
“Well keep looking,” I shrugged. “We need to look busy. I doubt anyone is looking for lurkers, especially not after the change in our appearance, but we still need to keep up the pretense.”
She sighed, holding up a hand to stop a waitress. “Excuse me, can I get another iced tea. And a plate of those cucumber finger sandwiches.” At my chuckle, she just shrugged. “What, I get snacky when I’m hungry.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “So you better share. I love those cucumber finger sandwiches.”
She winked at me. “Why do you think I got them? Anyway, what do you have so far? Dan’s been at it for a while, did he pick up anything useful yet?” Dan’s ability to mine locations for embedded data was one of my more useful tricks, and I hadn’t busted it out for a while. I was looking forward to applying my brain to a problem again instead of just hitting it with a stick. Hitting things with a stuck was much more satisfying when I had a detailed reason in mind for why I was doing it.
So far though, he hadn’t gotten much. “I don’t know a lot. At about ten fifteen yesterday morning, a pair of men entered that bar over there.” I gestured to the dive bar we were surveilling, a place called “The Rat Hole” (the bar’s owner had really been leaning into the dive bar meta with that one). “Once inside, they took up a position in the corner and made conversation for exactly two hours and fifteen minutes, then one of them smashed a bottle and stabbed the other through the eye.”
“Oh,” Callie winced. “That’s…what? How did the security department connect that to the cult?”
“Because after he killed his friend, the remaining cultist got down on his knees and informed the bar’s inhabitants of who he was. He remained entirely calm and reasonable through the whole arrest, and even waited quietly for security to arrive to get him without restraints.”
She blinked at me. “And…nobody thought that was weird?”
“Several people thought it was weird,” I confirmed. “Up to and including the arresting officers. I’m guessing they looked into it and didn’t see any issues with it. In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t compare the incidents looking for correlations, I guess they just didn’t find any.”
“I guess that makes sense,” she hedged. “I mean, there’s no way there’s just one security office for the whole city. These incidents were probably in totally different jurisdictions. I doubt they even have a full map of all of them, since a bunch probably didn’t even seem like cult related issues.” She studied the map more deeply. “Actually…what time did you say the guy killed his friend?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Twelve thirty, why?”
“One second,” she said quickly, taking out her scan ring. She pulled up a site, flipping through to a list, then started circling spots on the map. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Oh shit. Hold on.” She started circling spots faster and faster, and then she drew out a shape by connecting them. “What does that look like to you?”
I glanced at it. “I mean…a blob?” I said slowly. “Why, what does it look like to you?”
“Well, when you structure it like that, nothing. Especially not if you use the incident locations, but if you pull up a list of the security stations where they’re being HELD,” she said, taking out a piece of paper. She drew a shape, then another, and then connected them together. “And line them up like THIS…”
I studied her sketch and paled. “Shit. This is a formation. It’s in four dimensions. They staggered the timing to make sure the construct would form. But I don’t recognize the shape. Does this mean anything to you?”
“It’s kind of generic,” she grimaced. “If I had to describe it, I’d say some kind of booster maybe? Especially with the murder. If this wasn’t the only place where someone died, I would say that they’re using sacrifices to create formation nodes. But there’s no way the security department doesn’t have SOMEONE who would notice this. We’re B-rankers, and neither of us is even that good at formations.”
I frowned. “I mean, yeah, it’s weird they haven’t…” my stomach tightened. “Unless they have. And they didn’t say anything. Because they’re PART of it.”
“You think they turned the whole security force?” she asked skeptically.
“I don’t think they needed to,” I challenged, my mind racing. “Shit. I knew I recognized that damned intern. He wasn’t wearing his mask, and we didn’t meet for long, but I think that was Clarent. Think about it. They only need someone who can switch up assignments, and they clearly have that. They were able to reassign the interns so they could skip the finals. So they could have placed people at any of the stations.”
The more I spoke, the more sure I was that I was right. Bindings. That was Deveskane’s whole thing. Binding’s like the collars, like the cells they were used in. Chelsea’s yin yang path had a concept. Extreme yin gives birth to yang, and vice versa. That was what the little dots in the black and white sides of the circles represented. It meant that if you pushed something to a high enough extreme it would become the opposite.
In fact, Deveskane had DONE that before. Back at the Chasm. He’d used the unbinding energy from Atlas being unsealed to unbind the tower itself. If we assumed the Void Overgod had been in contact, it was possible, even likely, that the whole thing had been a dry run. He’d been experimenting with his Domain to learn how it worked.
Going around the Deans should have been impossible, but the Void Overgod had been trapped for a long time. If it could get free enough to send signals, it could presumably think well enough to study its prison. And Void Children were all about subversion and escape. The Void was ethereal and hard to pin down, it was why their stealth was so good. Deveskane’s boss had dissected the defenses and hand fed him a plan.
The more I looked, the more similar the two situations seemed. I’d tried to warn the Deans, but they hadn’t listened. Probably because I was a twenty year old from a lower realm who didn’t even know how to mythcraft, or possibly because Harper just didn’t believe the Void Overgod could pretend to be nonfunctional for so long. Whatever the reason, we needed to get to SOMEONE and tell them what was happening. Before it was too late-
The sky exploded. Literally. A colossal wave of red force SHATTERED the air above us. From distant locations, columns of red light erupted into the air. One, two, twenty, I counted one hundred and eight of them. The pattern was hard to track, but I was able to compare the locations mentally to the ones I’d seen on the map. I stared in horror as the beams of light began to twist and deform, creating a complex shape in the air, a circle of angry, painful geometric patterns that eroded the very world around them.
I was on the ground, I realized, staring up in horror at what was happening above us. I’d been knocked from my seat and was so stunned I hadn’t noticed. I climbed to my feet, reaching down to pull Callie up. “We need to go. We need to go now! We have to find someone. Anyone.” I fumbled for the bronze watch, but despite mashing the buttons I couldn’t get a connection. There must be interference.
As we watched, the amorphous mass of shifting power in the sky began to move, sliding away from the city proper towards the direction where the curse canyon was.
“Where the hell are the DEANS?” I hissed as Callie and I took off for the nearest platform back to Moment City. “And why the hell didn’t Saunders see this coming?” She had warned us to hurry, but we HAD. At least we hadn’t dragged our feet.
But I knew divination didn’t work like that. There were too many possibilities. She probably HAD seen it coming, she’d just seen it along with a million OTHER possible futures so it had gotten lost in the shuffle. Besides which the Void had its ways of camouflaging itself. Maybe the Overgod Void Child had prevented her from noticing. She was only a god. Not even a full one here either, just a fragment.
The platform was packed, and we had to fight our way through to get to the access point. As we arrived and waited to leave, I turned to Callie. “Ok, the Deans aren’t here to stop this, which means they’ve probably been drawn away. That’s a problem. But if the Deans aren’t HERE they’re most likely back at their own campuses.”
She saw where I was going with that. “You want me to head back to the spatial campus,” she said with a sigh. “Try to find my Dean and get him here. Are you sure?”
“No,” I admitted. “The idea of you leaving my sight is terrifying. I’d rather peel off my own skin than send you anywhere. But the more of them we can involve before that formation breaks open the Void containment, the better our chances. Harper should be there at least, or on the way. I just worry that he won’t be able to do much. It took him over a century to beat that thing last time.”
She leaned forward to put her arms around me, hugging tightly. Then she tipped up my mask and mashed her lips to mine. “Be safe,” she said quietly. “If anything happened to you…”
“Right back at you,” I whispered into her hair as I clung to her. “I love you, Cal.”
“I love you too, Shane,” she breathed. “Don’t you fucking die on me.” Then she turned and she was gone, vanished into the crowd as she headed for her own major. I forced my rampaging heart to calm as I turned back to step onto the platform. I needed to stay calm. Think this through.
They’d used us. I could see that now. Our warning hadn’t been ignored, it had been mistimed. Despite not implementing all the measures we might have liked, the Deans DID take things seriously. All of them being at the finals to oversee was clearly significant. But the Void had never intended to attack the finals. They’d baited us into thinking that. Or maybe I had just assumed.
Whatever the case, this was happening NOW. I needed to find the Dean, then my friends, in that order. This was going to get way worse before it got better, and I needed to make sure everyone was safe. My sister, Benny, Jessie, Bethy, they were all in danger. Callie was in danger. I smothered that horrible thought before it could form. Callie would be fine. She was strong. For now, I had to trust that she could take care of herself. I just hoped I could say the same of me. I had a feeling my self preservation skills were about to be pushed to the limit.