To get rid of Quarters was more difficult. With unusual tediousness, Ron followed me right up to the university canteen; after yesterday’s fasting I was tormented by a brutal hunger.
“Why do you stick around with me?”
My patience was running out. I wanted hundreds of unnatural things, but learning wasn’t one of them. I was dying from the obligation to spend two more hours studying the theory of tension, but I couldn’t leave. If I missed something important, I would be angered with myself. Though desire to visit a pub never left me for a second. I was cursed, probably!
“Tom, you’re not sick, are you?”
“No, it’s just a hangover.”
“But the party took place two days ago!” Quarters was taken aback.
“I ate something bad. I had food poisoning—got it? Vomited all day yesterday.”
“Sorry… you… left so unexpectedly then… Usually you stay until morning.”
I suddenly realized that Quarters must have been plagued by anxiety. Sweet of him, but I didn’t have the time.
“You are strange! You yourself told me to stop drinking. What else was I supposed to do there until morning?”
Quarters smiled (as if getting food poisoning was funny) and soon left me for some business of his own. Okay, I shook off one, but there were still two more left: the artisans and NZAMIPS. Whom did I fear most?
No one!
I began violently cutting a steak, imagining Laurent in its place. I couldn’t care less about all the discontented (even more so if they were corpses), but the number of problems they awarded me defied comprehension.
First, how soon would NZAMIPS find out about those three? Unlikely that the owner of the stables would mourn the runaway carriage driver; that is, he would simply cross him out of the payroll, and that would be it. The two beefs were in no way connected with me at all. How much would NZAMIPS find out if they got to the hangar? True, the fishermen had gotten a glimpse of me, and the boss of the carriage drivers had my address… Who had pulled my tongue yesterday? I wondered whether the police would be able to connect the island, the hangar, and the dead artisans, but this was out of my hands, and I decided not to worry about repercussions.
Second, I needed to figure out whether I was under the influence of the shackles of deliverance. It was simple: if the shackles were imposed, I wouldn’t be able to use the Source, and all that happened yesterday would be the consequence of the homebrew ritual. NZAMIPS could not hold me responsible, even if it discovered my involvement. But if I had something on me, and it wasn’t the shackles, well, that would be the “third” problem.
During the break between classes, I went to Rakshat and asked him to let me in the basement where they conducted the ritual of Empowerment, saying that I wanted to test myself again before resuming the studies. He didn’t mind and gave me a frame and a whirligig to check my concentration. After five minutes of testing, I discovered a funny thing: the Source manifested itself, but only at times. It was not quite the Source, and it wasn’t mine. Out of five attempts, it resonated twice, at best. The power sluggishly fluctuated somewhere around zero, but as soon as I focused on a simple spell, it burst with such strength that I barely managed to plug the channel. To continue casting spells would be folly.
That test supported the only conclusion: those half-baked macaques did mess me up. Seriously. They had not “killed” the magic, just broken it, the meager charlatans. What could I do with the Source now? Maimed magic is much worse than none at all. Disappointed, I habitually kicked the Source and, surprisingly, received a kick back, wrapped in a sort of anger—someone really expected me to be grateful and gave a hint that it had become bored. What the hell…?
The familiar feeling of the presence of another being set my hair on end. Holy priests, was Rustle sitting inside of me instead of the Source? Was that possible at all?
Hello, skeleton with brown foam…
I wanted to hang myself, fearing that forty days of quarantine would start anew.
Quietly, quietly, no panic! I read a book about Rustle, did I? To get rid of it was quite simple—I only needed to get to the garage… I rushed out of the basement bunker as if pursued by a hundred ghouls, ignoring Rakshat’s surprised exclamations and the bewilderment of the oncoming students.
I wanted to run non-stop and not think why and where I was going! Otherwise, this time more than just vision would fail me. I needed to get to the junkyard where my motorcycle was.
It was like a bet not to “think about the white monkey”; an ordinary man would have lost it, but not a dark magician. Two thoughts dominated my conscience: the need to get to the garage, and absolute, all-consuming rage.
How had the monster dared to play its trick on me, me?! Okay, no one had managed to exterminate Rustle in the last one thousand years, but I was ready to fix that. Even without the Source. Indeed, I didn’t need magic to kill the ghouls before! The complexity of the mission wouldn’t scare the dark off. I would bring down on it the entire power of technomagic! I would find what the technomagic was about and use its might on the monster. Rustle seemed to become impressed.
I must have looked awful on the outside; nobody requested that I buy a tram ticket, and that says a lot. Judge for yourself: I hissed, spat, and cursed myself, and looked like a mage at that. No wonder I scared people. I broke into the garage and grabbed the saddle bag taken off the motorcycle after the “death” of the Dark Knight. In the bag I kept my combat mage’s kit, including a powerful enchanted lamp—quite harmless to Rustle when it was inside me. But the lamp had a source of energy… I began violently plucking out the accumulator from the case, trying not to focus my thoughts on what I was doing. The zombie-dog skeptically watched my efforts.
There it was!
A painful touch stabbed my tongue, and my mouth became sour. Yes! Now I could think. In addition to the blue light, Rustle disliked electricity, so its victims were treated by… hmm… there was no point going into detail.
Cold and resounding emptiness reigned in my head. Perhaps, that’s how life looks like after the imposition of the shackles: the apotheosis of solitude. Given the alternative, I felt incredible relief. As they say, everything is relative.
The first round was on me. Nodding to a puzzled Max (“alright, ciao!”), I took the battery and got back to the apartment. It didn’t make sense to return to classes; tomorrow I would claim illness.
To get to the central NZAMIPS lab, wisely located in a separate outhouse, the captain had to cross diagonally the entire police building. When Locomotive reached the place, he understood how fortunate he was: waiting in his office for the expiration of the twenty-four hour timeline, he had a good night’s sleep, unlike all the others.
Gray from fatigue and looking ten years older, Satal sat in his chair, relaxing, and sipped something that resembled poorly made tea.
“How are you?” Locomotive called to him cautiously.
The coordinator did not waste energy on the greeting.
“We pulled out of the pump-sign the imprint of the aura, selected fifty candidates from the database, and are examining them now.”
“What if he is a visitor?” Baer asked practically. The dark are usually quite mobile people; they do not like sitting in their gardens as the white do.
“That would mean no luck,” Satal dropped indifferently.