I’d long ago given up trying to guess how big the Gunther Node was, but this room surprised even me. It was the size and height of a high school auditorium, with rows of metal chairs rather than permanently-installed folding seats, and it smelled of oil and exhaust like the node’s airplane hangar even though there were no doors big enough to admit a vehicle bigger than a moped. It could probably hold two hundred people with a handful of others standing along the walls. At the moment, there were fewer than thirty.
The seven of us genetic sports sat near the front of the room. We were bundled up in those oversized black cardigans with cowl hoods that made us look like medieval monks from the knees up. The fake mint scent was fainter, but not gone completely. Wallach assured me that only someone wearing one could smell it, but I could imagine the odor giving us away and hoped he was right.
Viv and Judy sat next to me. I’d tried to say it wasn’t their fight and they’d just glared at me, so I’d given up. It wasn’t as if they were going into battle just because they were here for this briefing.
Briefing. That sounded so…military. So not me. But I would do anything, including not be myself, if it meant getting Malcolm back. I’d called Ariadne Duwelt and informed her Abernathy’s would not be opening today. I was betting on the Board of Neutralities not being willing to challenge me, but I didn’t much care if they did.
Off to one side sat four stone magi. They would get us to what Lucia called the deployment point in Montana, a safe area where wards had been installed for ward-stepping. They were chatting quietly among themselves just like none of this mattered to them. It irritated me.
On the other hand, the two glass magi who stood near the door were silent and alert. One held a clear plastic box full of tiny things that glittered in the light. The other had a glass cornucopia tucked under one arm and what looked like a clear crystal Rubik’s cube in her other hand. They looked like they took their responsibilities seriously, which reassured me. We were counting on them even more than on our gadgets to get us through this.
In the row behind us sat three fighting teams, including Malcolm’s, bristling with weapons. They were our backup, and the first line of fighters for when we’d shut off the generator. I’d greeted them when we all entered the room, but now my attention was on Lucia, who stood at the front of the auditorium next to Wallach. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, but she moved as if she’d had a full night’s sleep.
“The plan is simple,” she told us. “You’ll all ward-step to outside the compound, and the teams will take Davies and her people to where they’ll infiltrate the compound, guided by Stentson and McGee.” She gestured at the glass magi, who nodded alertly. “You’ll have communicators to talk to each other, but use them sparingly. None of the illusions we were able to produce on short notice can do anything about sound, and you can’t count on the enemy being too stupid to realize someone’s there when they hear an invisible person talking. So—whisper when you have to talk, and keep quiet when you don’t.”
She snapped her fingers in the direction of the glass magi, and the woman holding the Rubik’s cube handed it to her. “Davies has this one’s twin,” she said. “McGee will enter directions on this one, and they will show up on Davies’s cube. It will lead you straight to the generator. Then all you have to do is smash it, or shoot it—anything to disrupt it.”
I saw Victor, to my left, run his hands over the odd-looking gun they’d given him. It looked like a toy rather than a real gun, if Nerf made toy guns that weren’t made of plastic in primary colors, and one that shot fist-sized rocks rather than bullets. I’d once more forgotten my own gun at home and had accepted an identical replacement, a Sig Sauer P320 I’d practiced with enough to be…not comfortable, guns never made me feel comfortable, but I wasn’t afraid I’d shoot my own foot off. I touched it where it hung at my right hip and made myself imagine using it. To save Malcolm, I could do anything. Even shoot another person.
“Once the generator is disabled,” Lucia was saying, “use the communicators to tell the teams, and get out of there as fast as you can. Make your way back to the deployment point and the stone magi will take you home.”
“You make it sound like we might get separated,” Nyla said. “I thought we were working together.”
“You should stay together, but with those illusions active, only Davies and Kapoor will be able to see you all. You need to be prepared with a plan for if you are separated.” Lucia looked suddenly tired. “If any of you do get separated, and you can’t find the others, get out. Don’t be a hero.”
“No worries there,” Victor said with a grin.
“Then…good luck,” Lucia said.
We all stood, and I approached Lucia, saying, “Thanks. I know you don’t believe he’s alive—”
“What I believe doesn’t matter,” Lucia said. “Now get out of here. I have to see how many fighters we still have so they can follow once you’ve cleared a path.”
I smiled. “So you do have faith in me.”
Lucia pursed her lips in thought. “Your God-given reserves of luck haven’t run out yet. I’ll let you know what I think tomorrow.”
She walked away. I was about to return to the others when Wallach grabbed my arm. “Mrs. Campbell,” he said, holding something small out toward me. I took it reflexively and nearly dropped it when I realized it was Malcolm’s wedding ring. Shock and horror shot through me. They’d retrieved Malcolm’s body and hadn’t told me. He was dead and all of this was pointless.
“Mrs. Campbell—oh, no, it’s not what you think,” Wallach said, converting his grip on my arm to a supportive hold. “I was told Mr. Campbell never wears his wedding ring when he goes on a mission. Something about it catching the light at the wrong time.”
I breathed out shallowly to dispel the white static before my vision. Of course. Malcolm never wore it when he went hunting, either.
“I’ve worked a little sympathetic magic on it,” Wallach went on. “It will warm up the nearer you are to him. It should guide you straight to him—well, not straight, but you shouldn’t have any trouble finding him.”
“But Lucia said to leave as soon as the field was disabled,” I said stupidly. The gold of Malcolm’s ring was smooth and warm to the touch, and I could imagine it having come right off his finger.
Wallach smiled and tapped his forehead knowingly. “That compound is a warren of little buildings,” he said. “Easy to get turned around. Good luck, Mrs. Campbell.”
I slid the ring over my left thumb, where it fit loosely, and returned to my team. What an odd sensation, having a team. The sports looked so uniform in their bulky cardigans with the gold pendants hanging down in front they managed to make Judy and Viv, in civilian clothes, look out of place. Viv hugged me. “Don’t get killed,” she whispered. “I say that to Jeremiah every time he goes on the hunt. It’s like a mantra.”
“I know,” I said, and hugged her back. “We’ll be back in no time.”
I got a more tentative hug from Judy. “Talk to him,” I whispered in her ear.
Judy shook her head. “It’s the wrong time.”
“There’s never going to be a right time.” I released her and looked at where Mike stood, quietly talking to Hector and Derrick.
Judy followed my gaze and turned pink. She shook her head again. I sighed. She knew best, probably, but I couldn’t help thinking it was a mistake to let things go on like this.
Mike waved off the other two and came toward me. “Be careful,” he said. “Mal would kill me if I let anything happen to you.”
“That means you believe he’s still alive.”
He smiled, a wry expression. “Your faith is infectious.”
He turned to Judy, who was watching him, her expression totally neutral. “You’re waiting here?” he said.
Judy nodded. “I couldn’t bear waiting at home and not knowing…you know.”
“I know.”
The air between them was so charged with words they weren’t saying I felt scorched. I wanted to back away, but I was afraid of drawing attention to myself. Neither of them seemed to remember I was there. Then Mike took two quick steps toward Judy, caught her up in his arms, and kissed her so passionately I thought the air might actually ignite. Judy, after a startled second, threw her arms around his neck and returned his kiss. I took the opportunity to step back, but I couldn’t stop watching them even though I knew it was rude.
Mike finally released her, but Judy didn’t let go her hold around his neck. “When I get back,” Mike murmured, “we have to talk.”
“I’m counting on it,” Judy said.
I quickly turned away, though I was sure they knew I’d been watching. Everyone still in the room except the stone and glass magi had their eyes on the little tableau. “Um,” I said, “I think we should have those glass communicators now. Mr. Stentson?”
The male glass magus looked up when I said his name. “Communicators. Yes.” He came toward me holding the plastic box with its glittering contents. “These work like typical wireless earbuds,” he said, extracting one from the pile and handing it to me. His brusque tone made me wish Lucia had brought in Harriet Keller, whose presence was always so soothing. I wondered whether she and Harry were somewhere in the node. The magus continued, “Though of course they’re powered by magic. It will fit to your ear and latch on for extra security.”
I didn’t like the sound of “latch on,” but I took the small glass earbud and inserted it into my ear. It wiggled unpleasantly, swelling just enough to be painful, then shrank until I could barely feel it was there. I touched it and felt hair-fine filaments growing from it, clinging to the arch of my ear and wrapping securely around my earlobe. I tilted my head, shook it, and felt the earbud move not at all.
“It’s not hard to use, but it has a lot of features, so it can be complex,” Stentson said. “Tap it once to activate it and double-tap to turn it off. These are set by default to communicate with everyone on the same band, which is all seven of you. However, if you want to speak to just one person, tap and hold the earbud while you say the person’s name. That will let you communicate individually not just with your team, but with any of the other teams’ members. Stop touching the earbud to end the communication and go back to your team’s band. Any questions?”
“How do I get it off when we’re done?” Victor said. He looked profoundly uncomfortable and kept raising his hand to almost scratch his ear.
“You just pull it out. The filaments break easily and dissolve in seconds. Don’t worry, it can’t implant itself in your ear canal.” Stentson grinned. “These are top of the line glass magus creations and won’t fail.”
“What about invisibility?” Nyla asked. She touched the gold locket hanging around her neck like she was afraid it might fall off.
“Ward-stepping can interfere with illusions,” Derrick said, “so I’ve got the origamis and will activate them when we’re in Montana. They’re good for three hours, but if you need to dispel the illusion before that, you just open the locket and take out the origami. Touching it will break the magic.”
“I hope nobody needs to do that,” I said. “Any other questions?”
Nobody spoke. “Then I guess it’s time to go. Don’t forget what I told you about ward-stepping, how it can make you sick.” I offered my hand to Mangesh. “How far outside the Mercy perimeter are the wards?”
“Far enough that we will not be seen,” Mangesh said. He took my hand, and something wrenched at my stomach, turning it inside out. The stink of hot gunmetal surrounded me, though there was no air for it to fill. I resisted the urge to breathe deeply and relaxed, knowing from experience that fighting made the sickness worse. Then there was solid ground beneath my feet. I staggered a few steps away through ankle-deep snow, closing my eyes against the frigid air that wanted to freeze them, and bent over with my hands on my knees, breathing deeply to keep from throwing up.
With my eyes closed, sounds were sharper, and I heard what sounded like dozens of people tromping through snow whose frozen crust crunched like broken glass. Knife-like wind sliced my face, making me grateful for my gloves and the coat I wore under my cardigan. I shook snow off my boots and stood, slowly, still feeling a lingering nausea. The wind blew loose snow in drifts across the field we stood in, and the sun, which hung as high in the sky as was possible in late March, was partly obscured by thin, wispy clouds. I saw nothing man-made anywhere nearby, just scattered conifers weighed down by blankets of snow.
“That’s some view,” Victor said.
I turned to face him and was struck temporarily mute at the sight of a wide river, dull blue despite the overcast, flowing sluggishly behind us. The ground on the far side of the river sloped steeply upwards, and a snow-crusted range of mountains towered over it. I’d never seen anything so casually majestic, as if the mountains had no idea how beautiful they were. This would be an extraordinary place to vacation, for someone who was the outdoorsy type.
“Helena,” Mike called out. I trudged through the snow to where he waited near the riverbank. “Open your locket.”
I cracked it open with some difficulty and held it flat on my gloved palm. Mike had the box of tiny origami butterflies open and extracted one with tweezers. He carefully placed it in the center of the locket. Its tiny wings fluttered once, and then it lay still. I closed the locket and tucked it away beneath my cardigan. I heard someone gasp, and turned to see Nyla looking about in all directions, searching for something.
“I’m still here,” I said. I wasn’t invisible to myself, something I’d insisted be part of the illusion; it didn’t matter for me, because I’d see through the illusion regardless, but I could imagine how disorienting it would be to the others not to be able to see their own hands and feet.
One by one, everyone got their origami butterfly illusion. “Turn on your earpieces,” I said, and tapped mine. I felt the swelling sensation again, and then a tense feeling on the back of my neck, like someone standing behind me breathing on it. “Can you hear me?”
“I can,” Ines’s voice sounded in my ear, soft but clearly audible and sounding as if she were standing there speaking to me.
“This feels very strange,” Jun said. “It’s too bad it’s magic, because I can think of half a dozen uses for it if it were tech.” Jun was actually standing next to me, so I heard her voice both through the earpiece and with my natural ears. That sounded strange.
“Time for the perimeter,” Mike said. “I’m telling them to bring through Paradox now.”
I was about to ask what Paradox was when the air a few feet away distorted, and an enormous familiar, four feet high at the shoulder with a hard exoskeleton that glimmered like an oil slick, twisted into being. I sucked in a deep breath to control a scream, but the creature ignored me despite being essentially right in my face. I fingered the stiff wool of the cardigan, then took a step toward the monster. It didn’t move, didn’t even sniff the air. I might as well not have been there for all the attention it paid me. I decided right then I was keeping the cardigan.
The air distorted again, and a familiar red-headed figure appeared. “This is stupid,” Brittany Spinelli said to Mike. “They’re all going to get killed.”
Mike’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “Spinelli,” he said. “I wonder why they sent you.”
“Because I’m the best, Conti,” Brittany replied. “Where are they?”
“Already concealed,” I said, making Brittany jump—I was close enough to touch her.
Brittany’s hard expression softened. “I won’t say I don’t think you’re crazy, but—good luck, Helena.”
I figured Brittany, who hated Malcolm, would be less generous if she knew my actual intentions. “Thanks,” I said. “Will you be part of the attack when we take down the field generator?”
“Heh. If that happens, I’ll be at the head of the line.”
“After me,” Conti snarled.
“Figure it out later,” I interposed. “Let’s go.”
Our trip across the snowy, pine-studded field was more difficult than I’d imagined, though I’d anticipated the invisible sports running into each other. I just hadn’t realized how easily that would happen. Finally, Mangesh and I took charge of the others and told them where to walk and when they were about to run into another invisible person, and the trek became easier.
“Stop,” one of the other fighters said. I didn’t know her name, but she wore elaborate goggles tinted pink and a matching anorak that made her look like Steampunk Barbie. “Spinelli, it’s your turn.”
I had thought, from Wallach’s description, that the perimeter of the Mercy compound was a physical fence, but as far as I could tell, the field stretched out for miles untouched by man—all except for a distant blotch with sides far too regular for Nature. It might have been a large farm or a small settlement. I held perfectly still in fear of accidentally wandering across the perimeter line. It wasn’t invisible, or I’d have seen it, but whatever it was made of, Steampunk Barbie could see.
Brittany led Paradox forward five steps, then six. Eight. Twelve. “Shouldn’t we have reached it by now?” she said.
“I don’t get it,” Steampunk Barbie said. “The line’s still there, but it’s not reacting to anything.”
Brittany dropped Paradox’s leash and strode back toward us, making the others cry out. The sports didn’t react, probably because they didn’t realize how potentially fatal her action was.
Nothing happened. Steampunk Barbie walked forward and drew a line in the snow with her toe, then waved her hand in the air above it. “It’s been turned off.”
“Isn’t that good?” Nyla asked.
“No,” Acosta said. “If they aren’t counting on this perimeter anymore, it means they’ve got different defenses up elsewhere—defenses we don’t know to protect against. This mission just got a hundred times harder.”
I clasped my hands together. Malcolm’s ring pressed into my thumb, cool as water now despite being close to my skin under my glove. “We can call it off,” I said. “This isn’t what you signed up for.”
“Not a good idea,” Acosta said. “This is still the perfect time for an assault. It’s been enough hours since the first attack that the edge has worn off their alertness, and not enough hours for them to change their strategy completely. Unless they’ve decided to evacuate—”
“They need this base too much to evacuate it,” Mike said. “If anything, they’ll have stepped up whatever they’ve been doing here and won’t be paying close attention to anything else.”
“We should go now,” Victor said. “They have someone walking the perimeter, and when he gets here, he won’t find anything.”
“How do you know that?” Brittany exclaimed.
“I see the future,” Victor replied. “I don’t know how you people are going to clean this up so it doesn’t look like anyone’s passed—”
“Leave it to me,” Mike said.
“Is everyone okay with that?” I asked my team. Everyone nodded, even Jun, who I’d thought would put up more of a fight. I guessed she really had been sincere when she committed herself. “I’ll contact you soon,” I told Mike, who nodded in the direction of my voice.
“Now is the time to stay close,” I said. “Mangesh and I will keep you from getting too far away or running into anyone. Let’s go, and…good luck.”
I pulled the glass Rubik’s cube from beneath my cardigan. It was clear enough that I could see the warped shapes of whatever lay beyond it. Deep in its heart, a tiny pink light pulsed like a heartbeat, pointing toward the distant angular shapes. I closed my left fist tight so I could feel Malcolm’s ring again and started walking.