“I’ve sent officers to the university and local services to inquire whether they saw a new mage. It is unlikely that the initiated magician is a tramp.”
“Watch,” the coordinator put the cup up to his head, “if there are any eccentrics on the streets. The time has come for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you get at all what had happened?”
Locomotive shrugged uncertainly—he had never dealt with such exotic cases of supernatural encounter, and the experts’ report had not been provided yet. Actually, that was the purpose of his visit to the coordinator.
Satal majestically waved his cup (fortunately, it was nearly empty): “In conjunction with the pump-sign, the shackles do not inhibit the Source, just tear it from the controlling willpower. The energy channels are left open-loop, and the initiated magician in such condition may try to get energy from the outside.”
Baer nodded: that he knew, but the burned-to-ashes corpses didn’t look like they had been sucked by a vampire.
“If at this moment some otherworldly creature offers itself as the Source, the monster will have access to the etheric body of the mage, bypassing all his natural defense mechanisms. Like manure directly into the vein! In that case, the infection cannot be stopped; the body resists for some time, but then the otherworldly wight totally subdues the subordinate’s shell and destroys its host. If we don’t find the carrier before his willpower has failed, we would have to deal directly with the thing that played in the hangar, so to speak. Got it?”
Locomotive did get it—his protective suit was not designed for that level of defense. With the risks so high, the dark was delaying the quarantine?! He had to start notifying the services immediately: plain soldiers from the barracks wouldn’t be enough to collect a really strong combat group; the “cleaners” would need time.
“Sir, there is a match!” a junior magician put his nose into the room.
The coordinator rushed from the place so quickly that he got into the lab before the captain. A pile of recorded crystals and cartons lay on the table; hopefully, they wouldn’t confuse the records afterwards. The dark mage was already comparing two muddy balls.
“I have two pieces of news for you: good and bad,” Satal began.
“F*ck you!” Locomotive could not refrain. “What’s there?”
“It looks like it’s our friend. That would be logical. What a strange crystal…”
“It cannot be! I checked on him last night!”
Satal snapped: “What was he doing?”
“He seemed to be asleep.”
The coordinator froze for a second: “Okay. Take a group, go to him. I am exhausted now, but he knows you. Try to make him drink an inhibitor: that is his only hope. I’ll call Fatun—let him bring his guys to town.”
Locomotive trotted to the garage, where the operative group was waiting for his orders. Let’s hope Satal would manage to get a call through to the “cleaners”. Baer had not had a chance yet to work with the magician that replaced Colonel Grokk, but they said he was an intelligent man.
I accurately paid for a tram ticket, politely shook hands with the concierge, and tried to compensate everyone for my crazy look with good behavior. No need to test human patience beyond what was necessary! My fingers trembled unpleasantly. Passing the mirrored windows and seeing my reflection, I even started: a real psycho looked back at me. The body’s physical health directly affects the condition of a magician’s soul, and I was getting into scrapes, one after another, one after another! Even a dark with a very strong spirit has a limit to what he can stand. I ordered myself to look more cheerful and decided not to drink coffee: chemical stimulants in my condition would only hurt.
What a bobble came out with Laurent! Even if I had roasted him slowly, enjoying his cries and stretching his agony, he couldn’t play a meaner trick on me in reply. Why did all this happen to me? Because one fool, rather than going to professionals, got engaged in self-treatment, as if the problem would go away by itself. Yeah, indeed! Out and back.
But my decision was firm: I would exterminate Rustle.
At first I was full of optimism. Why not? There were plenty of people kissed by the monster! If I did not touch the Source, it wouldn’t climb out of there, would it? True, the day after tomorrow I was supposed to resume my classes in magic. How my spellcasting would look in that situation, I didn’t dare to picture. Hence, I would need to withdraw from the class; it would be shameful, but necessary. Next I would need to find a specialist in Rustle, perhaps even pay some combat mage. I was not crazy and understood that I wouldn’t get out of such trouble alone. What if the lesion started progressing?
Nothing happened for a few hours, and I finally relaxed; after all, the entire morning had passed on without any problems.
There was no entertainment in my rented suite; all class assignments had already been done. I could go take a nap, but sleeping at noon was a clear sign of sickness. Bored, I took from the bedside table a book wrapped in yellowish newspaper—it was that very same rarity of Uncle’s (I hid it in the most visible place, according to the ancient spy methods), and began reading. Its pages breathed antiquity and magic; they must have been hiding something very important. It was a pity that I could not decipher what secrets they kept.
And then the strange faded scrawls formed in my mind a clear sentence: “The perimeter leaks in three spots.”
A wave of panic swept over me. Throwing the book off, I retreated to the far end of the bed, but the mysterious squiggles still danced in my mind. The perimeter leaks in three spots. The perimeter of what?
Maybe I dreamt that because I was nervous? It happened to me sometimes, like a short circuit in the brain. I opened the book randomly and looked at another page.
“Salem assures us that there is no threat,” the anonymous author had written in haste. “His ability to anticipate the attack is scary, but it’s our only hope.”
It seemed that if I wanted, I could see the unknown author, look over his shoulder, admire his mysterious perimeter, and maybe even move there, becoming a hero of the past and living his life, again and again. I wrapped the book in three layers—with my shirt, a blanket, and a bed sheet—and shoved it in the darkest corner of the cabinet.
I felt reluctance to learn anything from the book.
Childish curiosity touched my consciousness, as if the monster wanted to understand why.
Because!
And I realized that stupid tricks weren’t all that Rustle was capable of.
I heard a kettle whistling in the kitchen. I had no habit of drinking tea and didn’t use the main gas (Quarters’ uncle’s business) at all. Hot drinks weren’t a tradition in Krauhard—our ancestors had no stoves to make them. Their meal was simple and artless. Surprised, I dragged my slippers to the kitchen and turned off the burner under the tinkling kettle. Pinch me, but I knew I was seeing that roundside copper kettle for the first time in my life.
And then, abruptly, without any transition, I found myself standing on the balcony. High railings saved me! Slowly, touching the walls, I got back into the room and began violently poking myself with the accumulator’s electrodes. My arm ached displeasingly—I needed to find a less self-destructive remedy. I imagined a huge, droning electric arc and suddenly realized that I was poking my arm with a fork, and the accumulator lay on the table. At lightning speed I corrected the error. Also, I understood why I ended up on the balcony—the kitchen and balcony doors had been reversed.
My God…
I could not even imagine that such things were possible. Let’s face it: the magic skills of the creature were impressive. And what would it do at night then? This thought made me freeze in my tracks. I couldn’t sleep under the electric current every night for God knows how long. I would die from the nervous tension alone!