The Effaced: Chapter Eighteen

Hadiya pulled the automobile into a garage – a real garage, intended for nothing but holding automobiles, as luxurious of a waste of space as I could imagine – and rune covered plates of thick, banded steel lowered themselves over the entryway. She shut the automobile off, then we all clambered out. Kelly stretched and shook out his limbs, muttering to himself about not liking the cramped space inside the cabin.

I could sympathize. When I’d first left the Undercity, it had taken me a while to get used to being enclosed again.

“You are being taken into the private research facilities of Elucidate Labs,” Hadiya said, pulling a clipboard from seemingly nowhere. “As such, we expect you to sign standard nondisclosure agreements about the contents of our labs, the technology you are going to learn about, and the secrets that lay within, regardless of how you come about them. This contract is enforced with our personalized blend of undisclosed binding magic overlaying the standard auric compact.”

She paused, then added a line to the bottom for Kelly to also sign before she slid it over to me. I read through all of the text, then studied the complicated spell that they’d imprinted as a part of the document. I couldn’t make heads or tails of most of it, but I was able to understand enough to get the idea that it was mostly just incredibly complex overlays of binding. 

The one part of the spell I could clearly understand was the execution of the binding magic, which would only be enacted if the user broke or intended to break the contract. 

It still wasn’t perfect, but nothing was. The day someone managed to create a contract with zero loopholes was the day politicians would weep blood. 

I flipped it back over and read through the contract. It was mostly a standard non disclosure, though there had been allowances made for the release of information related to my case, and a few other things besides. None of it made me immediately suspicious, but I still took the time to read through it thoroughly before signing and passing it to Kelly, who didn’t even read it. 

I resisted the urge to run my hands through my hair again. How in the void was someone who grew up in the undercity so trusting? 

“Excellent,” the tall woman said, taking it back and signing in the adjudicator and witness lines, then tucking the clipboard into a slot in the wall. 

“Follow me,” she said, turning and marching to the wall on the far side of the room, pressing her hand to the wall, and muttering under her breath. 

A moment later, the wall swung open. I glanced at the door near where she’d sorted the clipboard, and Kelly voiced the question I had on my mind. 

“What’s that?” 

“Business and administration. The hall she’s opened is where the real good stuff is,” Rhys said, a faint smile on his face. “I was actually contracted as a –” 

“Hurry up,” Hadiya snapped, and Rhys hastened to rush across the room. I followed, Kelly alongside me. 

On the other side of the door was a clean white hallway that led to a stairwell, which stretched down into the earth at a gradually slanting angle. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all covered in runes and lines of spellwork, only about a tenth of which was glowing with power. 

We passed down the stairs and into what I could only describe as a labyrinth run by the world’s best janitor. Every surface was spotlessly white and clean, and rune lights glowed stark white in the ceiling, beating down on us. There were square, boxy rooms of various sizes in every direction. Many of them were complete white stone walls, but several had windows, and as Hadiya started passing through the maze, I took the time to peer into the rooms that did. 

A surprising number of the doors were open too, and at least a dozen people were scurrying around through the rooms. 

I wasn’t an enchanter, nor even a ritual mage, but I knew interesting things when I saw them, and the research being conducted by one of the most powerful labs in the city was certainly interesting. I paused as I saw a series of six aura crystals, four glowing subtly different shades of blue, and two glowing a bright pink color. I glanced at it, and Rhys sidled over. 

“Oh, that’s the aura research area,” the professorial man said. “All of those have the same recharge – being close to wood – but apparently, they all have different levels of pull on the ambient aura, despite each crystal recharging at the same time, and being calibrated to an auric capacity of… fifty? I think.” 

“How is that possible?” I asked, watching. 

“That’s not even the strangest part,” Rhys said, eyes sparkling with interest. “One of the pink ones and one of the blue ones don’t call on the ambient aura at all.” 

I narrowed my eyes. I knew that there were other ways to recharge – the city prized those above anything else when it came time to pay taxes. 

But I would have expected them to correlate to color. 

“Hurry up,” Kelly called from ahead, and Rhys and I sped up our pace to catch him and Hadiya. While we did, I passed a suit of what looked like plate armor designed to fit someone six feet tall, and absolutely wrapped in layer after layer of runework. 

“An attempt to re-create Evander Tailor’s cloak,” Rhys whispered, and I raised my eyebrows. 

“It doesn’t work,” Rhys said, answering my unasked question. “For one, the president won’t let Elderglass look over the cloak, something about it being a cultural relic. For another, Jeff – that’s the team lead for the design – has been endlessly moaning about how impossible it is to balance out more than thirty spells on one item. Even with the arch-star to compress the size of the runes, the network spell to set things up, and using the Tracktath method to offload the power, keeping all of those enchantments in a reasonable balance is imposs–”

“Boys,” Hadiya called, and we were forced to jog a bit to catch up. 

We passed by several more, also interesting, displays that left me tempted to ask more questions, but we were already falling behind, so I restrained myself. 

I saw a large, slender rifle that was made entirely out of green glass, with elegant runework running through it, and a swirling orb of obviously demonic power set into the center.

We passed a room where a group of mages, including a girl covered head to toe in druidic tattoos, and another, harried looking worker who was doing something with the arua-generation arch-star, working to assemble the clockwork heart of an aura generator. In the room next to it, there was a group of witches working together with huge liquid vats, slowly submerging the hearts in each one, which added thin layers of multi-faceted crystal atop them.

There was a space containing twisting balls of light that would beam from spell array to spell array, turn invisible, and then instantly appear near where they first had emerged from, but with the light scattered all over the wall. I had no idea what the purpose of that room was, but it was a sight to behold 

A set of wooden doorways that glowed with pulsing gray light, swirling into shape, and clearly had runes that indicated sympathetic linking caught my eye. There were a half dozen witches and druids standing around it, muttering to themselves, and though I wasn’t able to figure this room out any more than the last one, I was tempted to lean into Rhys and ask him. The only reason I didn’t was that I saw the door with Hadiya’s name on it. 

She didn’t have a window, but she pushed the door open and ushered us inside. 

Compared to all of the other rooms we had passed on the way here, Hadiya’s room was something of a disappointment. There was what looked to be a disassembled radio, with sparks of magic that flickered as I approached them – probably faerie magic, reacting to the iron in my shirt, then. 

The weirdest thing in the room was a clay tablet that had letters in a language that I didn’t understand, as well as an image clearly depicting a human, with a swirling shape inside the head, and six other shapes around the person’s head. 

I pulled back from looking at the tablet further, since I didn’t want to risk putting out the faerie magic. 

Hadia gestured to the chairs that had been haphazardly stacked in the corner of the room, while sitting in the one chair that had been left out.

“You all are welcome to take a seat.” 

Kelly unstacked the chairs, while I pointed at the tablet. 

“What’s that?” I asked Rhys. “The rest looks like a radio, but that looks like some weird… I don’t even know.” 

“It’s not a radio, it’s a planar friction measurement device,” Hadiya said idly as she rummaged in her desk. 

“The ritual was found in a tomb outside of Agaris,” Rhys said, and the name sounded vaguely familiar to me. One of the capitals of a nation to the south, I thought? 

“It described a ritual for creating a sort of supercharged druid,” Rhys continued. “Supposedly it allowed the druid to bond to anything, and even reach beyond the planes, though that part of the tomb was destroyed. I don’t think it works, but…” 

“Ancient magic is generally terrible, but it’s also frequently got pieces of the puzzle that can be updated and applied to modern life,” Hadiya said. “The ritual is barbaric, and we’re not certain that it would even work, but some of the strengthening principles could be used to improve the aura generators that our lab produces. Rhys is working as a consultant on translating a lot of ancient things.” 

We took a seat as Kelly finished with the chairs, and Hadiya nodded. 

“Let’s talk about the death of Senator Ermonte,” she said. 

As she did, something in Rhys seemed to break. A horrible, haunted expression flitted across his face for a moment, replacing the jovial professorial man with someone who had lost everything. 

I hadn’t realized it, but it made sense that Rhys’ current happiness would be a mask. He had just lost his family, after all. How would I feel if I lost Zone? 

But the mere fact I hadn’t been considering his feelings as a person caused me to take a moment to breathe. I was retreating too much into my shell in order to deal with this situation. That wasn’t healthy, and it wasn’t entirely safe. I’d barely stopped myself from killing a kid who threatened me, but if I kept backsliding, I might not stop myself next time. 

I took a long, slow, steadying breath, then patted Rhys on the back. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said quietly, and the other man gave me a small, thankful yet sad smile. 

“You said that you had some possible suspects,” Hadiya said to me, and I turned back.

“Right. I spoke to the Contractor–” 

“The Demonic Aspirant?” Hadiya asked. 

“Yes,” I said. “When I was Mist, I killed a group of rival demons for him, and he owed me a favor. I called on it for information. He suggested that there were three people who might have the skills needed to have killed the good senator.” 

Kelly looked at me strangely when I commented that I had once been Mist, but I ignored it for now as I went through the list of suspects the Contractor had given me, and Hadiya pursed her lips. 

“I don’t believe it’s Bleeding Eyes,” she finally said. “I don’t track the nonsense titles that the Undercity seems to love, but is he about five foot two, with white hair down to his waist, and eyes that are the color of blood?” 

“That’s him,” Kelly said. “Creeps me out.” 

I glanced at Kelly, surprised that he’d ever seen Bleeding Eyes. The man’s work was expensive. 

“It is,” I agreed. 

“It’s not him,” Hadiya said dismissively. “He was working on a ritual with our workers when the killing occurred.” 

“That leaves Egress and Horse,” Rhys said. “I don’t know either.” 

“Not quite,” I said. “There’s another option. The Arenamaster…”