Sully slugged through the thick snow on the pavement outside the Imperial Bureau of Investigation building on Staten Island. It had been falling every time night fell with clockwork regularity and it was making pedestrian life in the city a bloody nuisance. She had to get all the way across from Queens in this hell. Domino was supposedly in charge of the city's weather but she had apparently given nothing more than a distracted shrug when she received complaints about it and muttered something about forces needing balance before disappearing back into the crackling recesses of her own mind. They had a hot summer, so this was the payback. Sully's left wrist felt cold. She wasn't used to wearing a watch. The watch had been her compromise: with the dexterity of her work, a ring was out of the question, and she had a serious aversion to wearing anything around her neck that could be used to garotte her. Paranoia was a useful survival trait in her line of work.
Marie wore an engagement ring with a big fat diamond on it with an even mix of flustered pride and spoiled embarrassment. Since they had announced the engagement to all of their friends, mainly Marie's if Sully was being honest, life had been pretty close to perfect. They were looking into getting a bigger place together, and with Sully's overdue promotion to Superior Agent of the Crown, they had enough money coming in that Marie could cut back to working day-shifts in the restaurant rather than the more tip heavy night shifts at the gentlemen's club.
The irritations were all minor ones. The snow. The unexpected weight on her wrist. Having to go in person to the office to request a two hour window when she was not on-call so that she could go and speak to the most irritating thing in her life. The wedding planner was a camp little man from Ophir who was always wearing a silk shirt and sweating. Not enough that you could smell him over the rosewater he doused himself in, just enough that he always had a little shine to his skin. Marie got on well with him: they were friends from some theatre production a dozen career switches ago, and every session that Sully had endured so far had ended with them flouncing off for cocktails somewhere overpriced and trendy where she would foot the bill.
The last irritation of the day was her mobile phone. She much preferred the simplicity of seeking spells and a quick call back into the office, but apparently it wasn't enough that she reported every damned thing in triplicate after she had been out on assignment. She now had to call in from on-site and update them every hour. She was just waiting for the damned devices to get an agent killed by ringing at the wrong time so that she could petition to have the whole lot of them binned, but so far no luck on that front. It had the unexpected benefit of Marie actually getting to know where she was and what she was up to.
The reverse was obviously not true. Marie's phone was a thing of mystery to Sully. Somehow she was always carrying it, or more often than not, typing away with a clatter of her false nails, but she never seemed to answer when Sully called. The voice-mail beeped to life, and Marie's voice said,
"I can't answer right now. I am very busy. Not taking a nap no matter what Sully says."
Sully smirked at the gentle lilt of Marie's voice and she rolled her eyes at herself, even a recording made her smile. The infernal device beeped in her ear and she said,
"Hey sweetheart. Get out of bed. That's me off for two hours. I will see you at the appointment in half an hour, I guess. If you wake up in time."
She saw a yellow cab parked at the end of the block, hung up the phone and jogged along to see if she could catch it first. She felt the prickle of magic along her skin and her contingency spells sprang to life a moment before some fat Ophiran business man collided with her, knocking her into the gutter and soaking her jeans halfway to the knee. Her shields launched him into the wall of the corner building with a scream. He started back across towards her, yelling in his own language interspersed with threats of litigation in rapid fire English but he caught a glimpse of her face and backed away.
She spat on the pavement, "Yeah, that's what I thought."
She walked along to a bagel stand and stood in line for a coffee. Enough of an excuse to stand in the street without letting on that she knew somebody was casting. Her usual scanning spell wasn't a noisy thing, but it did require more than a few fairly large gestures that would draw attention. She braced herself for the mental backlash and drew the spell out of the rear compartment of her mind without the proper preparations. Her head started pounding immediately as she traced shapes that were supposed to be far larger inside her coat pocket.
It was enough, barely. The energy rushed through her, and the scan flickered out, tracing every piece of magic being worked. There was the fire rune in the coffee machine. Here were the lights. The whole block was enveloped inside a shimmering spell, much more complex than the protective shell that had formed around her. It seemed to resist identification. Whatever it was had been the thing to trigger her protections. Whatever it did, it didn't seem to be hurting anybody and more importantly, she reminded herself, she was off duty.
The taxi was long gone. She actually bought a cup of spiced tea to keep her hands warm as she power-walked away from whatever this mess was going to be. She carefully side-stepped a pair of construction workers having a screaming argument at each other next to a broken pane of glass. She sipped her tea and stayed in her lane. At the end of the block she re-oriented herself, glancing up to the sky-line to work out which direction she was headed. The buildings looked unfamiliar. She groaned, tossed her half finished tea into a trash can, and walked across the street to look for a better vantage point.
A fat Ophiran businessman collided with her, knocking her into the slush of the gutter and soaking her trousers all over again. She turned on him with a snarl but he had already moved away. He was wearing the same old-fashioned pin-stripe suit as the last one.
She yelled after him, "thanks mate. Just what I needed!"
But he didn't even acknowledge her. With disgust, she stepped back up onto the pavement and started heading along, trying to shake the grey slush off of her trouser legs. She passed by a bagel stand, and deja vu was ringing in her ears. There were two construction workers struggling with a pane of glass that almost toppled on top of her before she caught it. They thanked her repeatedly, but she recognised them now, and under her breath, she was muttering, "No. No. No."
She ran along the rest of the street, dodging past a crying woman with an overflowing suitcase, and then passed by the end of the block. She crashed into a fat Ophiran businessman as she stepped off of the pavement and caught a hold on his tie before he could get away. He turned on her wide-eyed as she smashed the heel of her hand into his nose. It broke with a wet pop, and as he started wailing she kicked his legs out from under him. Leaving him in the gutter, her face had shifted into a grin without her realising as she shouted at him, "Watch where you are going next time!"
She stormed along the road and cast a scan in full view of everyone in line at the bagel stand. A few of them shuffled away from her nervously. The bubble around the block was still there, subtle as the wind and pulsing with power. Now that she knew what she was looking at she could see that it was shrinking back towards her. She stood there and watched the spell closing in towards her. There was a curve to it: she started to do the math, followed the angle up, and started tracking the point of origin.
She had almost completed the calculation to the right window of the big brown apartment building when the outer edge of the spell collapsed in with a shudder, and a fat Ophiran businessman collided with her, knocking her into the gutter and soaking her with slush. She cursed loudly, startling a few pedestrians. The businessman was already out of reach for vengeance, so she hurried back along to the bagel stand and got back into the same position to line up with the apartment building. She was distracted by shattering glass and grunted in irritation as she was forced to cast the scan again to get more angles. The third story corner apartment.
Sully sprinted past the fighting construction workers, and pushed the crying woman with the suitcase out of the doorway. She moved through the foyer and ducked between the elevator's closing doors. It had reached the second floor by the time a fat Ophiran businessman crashed into her, and she fell into the gutter on her knees. She was breathing hard, freezing and soaking. The grin crept back onto her face as she hauled herself to her feet. She turned and followed the businessman to the edge of the spell. It was still expanding by the time she got there, creeping along the road and clearing away the worst of the snow as it went. She drew in a deep breath, shook the lethargy out of her arms and legs and then sprinted through the barrier.
She dodged past the pinstriped bulk and dashed along the road, but she ran directly into one of the construction workers and skidded along in the slush until she came to a halt on the road. The first car swerved around her. The second did not, it clipped her off of the road, and she landed in the gutter. She spat a foul mouthful of half frozen filth onto the pavement and tried to shake some life back into her arm. It was hanging floppy from the shoulder down and the fact that there was no pain yet was alarming her. The street spun beneath her, and then she crashed into a fat Ophiran businessman. The impact made her shriek as her shoulder ground back into place. She was already soaked, but the liquid trickling down her arm felt warm.
Sully spat into the gutter again, then went to sit on a stoop and catch her breath until the spell collapsed again. She was ready this time, and leapt out of the fat man's way. The impact would probably have been too much on a freshly re-located shoulder. She considered going for another sit down. Ten minutes rest really hadn't been enough. She settled for going and buying a coffee. She finished it just as the spell collapsed. She was hit by the businessman, but she rolled with it. She had the time to think, impulsiveness was not helping anything.
For the next few cycles she just walked along the pavement, taking it all in, working out the timing of events without her interference. She glanced at her new watch just as the world reset and realised that the face was not just cracked but shattered. The anger faded for a moment and there was just a leaden weight in her stomach. She was knocked off of her feet and just lay there in the street. This was the worst day.
This time she came out swinging. A right hook dropped the businessman, and then she was off running. She ducked a construction worker's elbow and arrived at the locked door of the apartment just as it was opened from inside by the crying woman. Sully jumped the suitcase, skipped the elevator, and sprinted up the stairs. She was breathless by the time she reached the door of the apartment at the epicentre. So tired that she considered knocking instead of blasting the door off of its hinges. There was a name scribbled in marker over the mail-slot, Mr. Chad Bowden lived here. She only considered knocking for a moment, then it passed.
The explosion shattered all of the windows in the building, and she charged, pausing only to make sure that the main room was secure before pressing on to the ajar door. There was a scatter of yellowing pages across the bed and some ancient spell-books that really belonged in a library. At a desk in the corner was the only occupant, he looked dishevelled and sweaty. He was naked, skinny, and rambling, "I can make her come back. I can take it all back. She won't even know. I won't even know. I can fix it all. If I can just..."
His hands were moving at blinding speed, weaving together spells that were never meant to come in contact, tapping the root of his power to drain it to the last drop. He was the perfect picture of a mage gone mad. Sully didn't even hesitate, she twisted her fingers and snarled out the words, and a bolt of moonlight leapt across the room. He deflected it with a contemptuous flick of his wrist, then he turned on her, "What are you doing here? You weren't here before."
She didn't answer, she was too busy grinning. She called up another spell and launched it at him. He created some sort of funnelling shield that launched the lethal bolt of power back out and into the kitchenette of the living room where one of the dishes stacked in the sink exploded. The plate shards turned into feathers in the air and drifted to the ground. He lashed out with a bolt of lightning that Sully avoided without a simple mirror shield. She started laughing, "Come on Chad, what else have you got?"
He began casting something more complex and it was interrupted by a desk to the back of his head as she cast a quick concussion beneath it. She ran towards him, casting an enhancement spell that made her already substantial muscles swell and strain beneath the surface of her skin. She was faster and stronger now than at the start of the ordeal, but it was rapidly burning through her reserves, both magical and biological. She avoided his next attack, a flurry of conjured blades, by using nothing but that enhanced speed. Then she was close enough to punch him in the throat. His casting stopped immediately, and he made a gargling sound.
She released the enhancement spell before it dropped her, and her laughter got more intense as he fell to his knees. The spell, the big spell that had held the entire street hostage, collapsed unevenly this time, fragmenting as he failed to complete it. The wave swept through the room and it rocked Sully on her feet. Yellowed paper turned to dust, the dishes in the sink turned into a reeking mass of mold. The years flooded over the room in a moment, and the idiot who had caused it all was little more than a leathery skeleton.
Sully took a deep breath of the reeking air, and then nearly jumped out of her skin when an alarm started beeping in her pocket. She pulled out the damned phone and turned off the alarm warning her that she should be at the wedding planner. Her torn sleeve flopped down to the ground, and her smile faded.
She jogged down the stairs and nearly tripped over the scattered corpses outside: the years had caught up to them all. There were probably less than a hundred people dead, those that had stayed inside the area of influence for the whole ten minutes or so that had been looped. She stepped carefully over what had been the crying girl at the edge of the block. She was going to have to call the office. She had to. But she could at least call Marie first. It went to voice-mail, and she left another message, "Hey, sweetheart. I am running a little late for the wedding planner. Uh. If you stick on the news in about half an hour, you will probably see why. I will be there as quick as I can. Uh. Sorry."
Guilt was sitting down in the bottom of her gut now. She couldn't have avoided this. She didn't know. But she was still letting Marie down again. She wondered as she rang through to the office if there was some way that she could have saved these people. All of these people. She wondered if she had calmed him down and spoken to him if he could have undone this. She stared glumly at the rusted hulk of the bagel stand and waited to report.