They stole the Ouija board. It was the only explanation. The fifth threat, the one that neither Dyna nor Hematite could account for, hadn’t engaged in combat. The group was looking for artifacts. They could easily have had detection tools similar to what Tartarus had. Dyna hadn’t checked the bodies for such tools; she was focused more on weapons than other equipment.
How were they planning on extracting themselves from the situation and the city? Grafton had tried using the airport. Would they do the same?
“Beatrice,” Dyna said, phone back in her own hand now. “Are you able to ground all flights?”
“I am able to issue a grounding order; I am unable to physically ensure no flight leaves the ground should an operator ignore a grounding order. Most aircraft do not have wireless flight capabilities that I am able to interface with.”
“Grounding order is better than nothing,” Dyna said.
“Understood.”
Last time, she had rushed out after Grafton to apprehend the mind-controller before he could leave the area.
Last time, she did not have a hostile artificer planning on murdering her. She still wasn’t quite sure what the goal was of those two mind-controlled men who had chased her out of the pastry shop, but now at least, she mostly believed that Id did not want her dead.
The same could not be said of this organization.
“Hematite, are we still dying?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Soon?”
“I can’t tell. My intuition doesn’t really work like that.”
“Does your intuition have any suggestions?”
Hematite didn’t answer. She turned her head this way and that, looking around the employee only area. Probably looking for text that would trigger her power. When she turned back to the power switch—or the large shock warning label on it—she stopped and stared for a long moment.
“What?” Dyna asked. “Do you see something?”
“No,” she started, then stopped with obvious hesitance. “I mean, yes, but I’m not sure what it means. It’s written backwards like it was meant to be read with…” Hematite trailed off, glancing back to where Dyna held the mirror against her phone. It was the only way she could keep both in one hand and her other hand free for a gun if necessary. Beyond scowling slightly, she didn’t comment further. “I can still read it though. Does ‘Tuesday’ mean anything to you? Today is Friday…”
“If we have to hold out until Tuesday, we’re screwed. Even ignoring the murderous artificer that knocked Ruby out of commission, the Ouija board will be… be…” Dyna blinked. Some association between Tuesday and the Ouija board struck her, but she couldn’t quite make the connection. It was on the tip of her tongue.
“Tuesday is spelled wrong, if that means anything. It has an ‘e’ instead of the ‘y’.”
That did it.
Dyna jolted. A cold sweat broke out over her body as her mind filled in the missing puzzle piece. Her mouth went dry and her face… Her face must have done something because Hematite took a concerned step forward.
“Are you alright?”
“Tuesdaes,” Dyna said.
“What?”
“It’s a craft store, thrift shop, art supply store. Or something. It is where I got the Ouija board.”
“So… what? It isn’t like artifacts grow on trees. It was probably the only one there. Why is that important now?”
“Because it isn’t the only artifact I got from there. I bought several other things. They’re in my apartment.”
Hematite adopted a glower. “Not reporting one is irresponsible, but you got several without reporting them?”
“They weren’t artifacts when I got them. Still aren’t, as far as I know.”
“Then—”
“I make artifacts. That’s my power. It is finicky and I’m still figuring out the exact methods, but I have several instances of evidence that show I can do this kind of stuff. That’s what this is for,” Dyna said, twisting slightly to show off the game of Operation. “I’m going to use it to pull the heart right out of whoever is after us.”
Hematite failed to suppress a gag.
Dyna paid her little mind, too worried about what her seeing Tuesdaes might mean for the stash of proto-artifacts she had at her apartment. “And if these people want artifacts, my apartment may very well give them the next closest thing. Beatrice! You’re aware of my apartment, aren’t you?”
“Correct.”
“Do you have eyes on any street cameras nearby? Is there any suspicious activity going on around it? Can you redirect a team to it?”
“Nearest security team redirected at your request. Are you sure you know what you are doing?”
“I’m with the robot lady,” Hematite said. “You’re taking reinforcements away from us?”
“Unless it is a team of artificers, I don’t know what they would do against someone that severely injured Ruby. We need to get the Ouija board back—it’s the only artifact that they definitely have their hands on at the moment—and dodge that artificer at the same time. At least until I figure out how to use Operation against him.”
Hematite’s gaze turned flat as her eyes flicked down to the board game under Dyna’s arm. “You do know how insane that sounds, right?”
“Yes.”
“Damn it. I thought you were normal.”
“I am normal, it’s…” Dyna shook her head. “Beatrice? Do you have the most likely path our thief might have taken yet? Any eyes on him out on the streets?”
“No visual confirmation of priority artifact Ouija Board located at this time. Pathfinding algorithm completed in 138.82 seconds, cross-referenced with observational data and likely path traversal. I have three unique paths subject Thief is likely to have taken. Data sent to your phone.”
Dyna, shuffling the mirror away from her phone, found a map pulled up with live-updated data. The department store had a few thick veins spreading away from it, which branched off into smaller and smaller paths. There were hundreds of them, presumably representing all the different possible paths the thief could have taken at any point in his likely escape. The end point of each line was still extending outward. In many cases, those end points branched off into smaller and smaller lines, which continued until they branched off. At many points, those branches terminated abruptly. Probably at points where Beatrice had security camera data.
However, as Beatrice said, only three were highlighted in a bright green. Unfortunately, each of the three led off in different directions.
“Hematite?” Dyna said, flipping the phone around to show the precog.
Apparently unprepared for the assault of information, her eyes unfocused. She even went cross-eyed for a brief moment before she shook her head. “The north line, I think,” she said after staring.
“Great. We need to move.”
“I don’t know if that is where the Ouija board is or if that is just where my intuition says we should go to stay out of this entirely,” Hematite said, shuffling her feet. “Sorry.”
“It is better than nothing. Beatrice, any possibility of transportation?”
“There is a motorcycle—”
“I don’t know how to ride a motorcycle. A bicycle, yes, but—”
“I do.”
Dyna blinked and shot Hematite a look. “You know how to ride a motorcycle?”
Hematite shrugged. “I have an Oxy2 Racer. Despite the name, it isn’t actually a racing bike, but it is how I get around—”
“Can you ride… can I ride with you without getting us both killed?”
“If you can hold on tight and not shift your weight around abruptly.”
Dyna licked her lips, feeling some butterflies in her stomach. She wanted to ask Beatrice for alternate options, but at the same time, she had seen videos online of stupid people in bikes. People weaving between cars to get through traffic or slipping through narrow passages that cars would never be able to navigate. The stupid people online were just doing it for fun and thrills, endangering other drivers with their recklessness. But Dyna and Hematite actually had a reason.
“Fine. Beatrice, where?”
“Follow the hall you are in to the exit doors to the south then turn to your left and proceed for fifty meters. You will find the vehicle parked behind a nearby bar.”
“Great,” Dyna said, not feeling very enthusiastic at all. Motorcycles always seemed… a bit too dangerous. When she had been looking at vehicles before renting her apartment, she had seen incident rates for various types of vehicles. From SUVs to trucks to cars and, naturally, motorcycles. There were less motorcycles than other types of vehicles, but when a motorcycle did get in an accident, it generally did not turn out well at all.
Taking a deep breath, she started walking anyway. “Let’s move.”
“Warning: The north path is adjacent to the location Ruby encountered [unknown] her opponents.”
“Lovely.”
Following Beatrice’s instructions, it didn’t take long before Dyna and Hematite came across the motorcycle. Some part of Dyna had been hoping for one of those little sidecars for her to ride in. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It was an older motorcycle—some sort of Harley or chopper—with worn red paint.
Hematite hopped on without hesitation. She kicked up the stand and pulled out her makeshift lockpick once again. Dyna honestly didn’t think it should work on a vehicle—or any lock for that matter—and yet, with a twist of her wrist, the engine came to life.
“Hop on!”
“No helmets,” Dyna grumbled as she complied. She wasn’t sure that the seat was designed for two people, but there was a bit of the aged leather behind Hematite and it seemed to have little footrests on either side for her to use. As soon as she got seated properly, Hematite spurred the bike off.
The speed and vibration caused by their rapid departure made Dyna cling to Hematite tight enough that she worried she would pinch the other woman in two. But Hematite didn’t complain. Or, if she did, Dyna couldn’t hear it over the wind rushing past her ears.
Operation and the submachine gun without a sling were pinched between Dyna and Hematite. The gun had its safety on, naturally. Dyna’s phone was out in one hand and her mirror was in her other, but she couldn’t see either with her arms wrapped around Hematite. Having lost her earbud, Dyna had no way of hearing Beatrice either.
She felt… blind. Her eyes still worked, obviously, but just the lack of available information had the world closed in around her. Someone could pop around a corner, aim at them, and fire without her being aware at all. Beatrice could be warning them of the artificer or some other threat and neither of them would know it.
Hematite didn’t stop. Dyna was pretty sure they had blown through two red lights and a stop sign. Dyna wondered if it was luck that they hadn’t been hit or Beatrice manipulating stop lights to try to keep their route clear. Either way, there weren’t many vehicles on the road.
Actually, now that Dyna thought about it, Ruby’s fight might have frightened most people away depending on how loud it had been.
Perhaps it was a combination of all three. Whatever the case, Hematite didn’t stop the motorcycle for anything. Not even to check the map. Was she running on intuition or had she memorized it?
After several minutes of riding—during which time they went over two more intersections without stopping—they came across a street with several buildings but exceedingly few windows. Glass littered the entire area. Even the lights had been shot out. Only a handful of streetlights bathed the area in a yellow glow. Toward the end of the street, they stopped alongside an alleyway with an old truck parked in it. A wooden fence blocked off the far end of the alley. There were dozens of tire tracks and footprints along the side of the building and a burned out electric car that might have been one of the loaners from the Carroll Institute. It had apparently run into something that wasn’t there now and had gone up in flames. Although the car wasn’t on fire at the moment, Dyna could see smoke still wafting out of its shattered windows.
“I think we found where Ruby had her fight.”
With the motorcycle finally stopped, at least for the moment, Dyna hurriedly peeled her arms off Hematite to first check her mirror—blank but with black lenses indicating someone was likely nearby but just didn’t have eyes on her—and then her phone.
“Beatrice?”
“This is Beatrice. During your transit, I was able to collapse several paths after spotting a likely target. You are in the right direction, however—”
Dyna’s mirror changed to a perspective of someone staring at her back. Dropping her phone, she grabbed the gun, flicked the safety off, and pivoted where she sat. Hematite started moving the bike, apparently aware of the danger before Dyna had a chance to say anything. The sudden movement almost had her falling off the back, but she managed to grab hold of Hematite’s shoulder, pinning the mirror between her hand and Hematite.
Operation fell to the ground along with her phone. Dyna couldn’t pay it any mind at the moment. Her eyes were on the sidewalk, searching for any sign of who might have had them in view.
A bit of movement had her squeezing the trigger. She didn’t expect to hit anything. Moving on a motorcycle, holding the gun in one hand, not really aiming, unfamiliar firearm… Any one of those would have been a problem, but all three?
She was just hoping the exploding bits of brick and sidewalk would have whoever it was thinking twice before attacking them.
But her actions seemed to have the opposite effect.
The shadow moved out, fully standing on the sidewalk. Yellow streetlight reflected off his dark clothes. He was tall and wide with broad shoulders. A veritable mountain of a man. Although he wore the same style of equipment that the men in the department store had worn, it didn’t look like it fit him all that well. He was just too big. They apparently didn’t have custom sizes for their gear.
Dyna squeezed the trigger again and again. The three round bursts peppered the area around him as Hematite sped away. She was pretty sure that at least one bullet hit him, but it only barely knocked his shoulder back. It looked more like he flinched than got hit by a bullet.
He pulled a rifle off his back. A long rifle with a thick barrel. Larger than any gun Dyna had ever seen. He knelt down, propping up one elbow on his extended knee as he aimed down the gun’s scope.
Dyna shouted… something. She wasn’t sure what. A warning of some kind. Hematite either heard or intuited the need to swerve.
The submachine guns sounded like firecrackers when they went off. The suppressor didn’t silence the bullets, but they did keep the noise from blowing Dyna’s eardrums out. A regular, unsuppressed gun did hurt her ears, often leaving her inner ear ringing for a few minutes afterward if she failed to use ear protection.
The long rifle sounded like a cannon.
The sound alone shook the street. The glass in the windows of the buildings didn’t explode, but only because every single pane had already shattered. A lancing heat seared at Dyna’s arm, almost making her let go of Hematite in sheer shock. Only the surprising lack of pain let her keep her hold.
Hematite, however, opened her mouth in a silent scream. There might have been noise, but after that cannon blast, Dyna couldn’t hear it.
Her arm below the elbow simply vanished in a spray of gore. Along with it, the handle of the motorcycle. Her swerve hadn’t been far or fast enough. Perhaps her luck had simply run out. Or it couldn’t stand up to such an overwhelming weapon.
The bike wobbled back and forth. Hematite, though likely delirious from pain, tried to keep it going. Her efforts fell short when the bike tipped just a little too far.
Dyna hit the ground shoulder first. She felt something snap even as she slid along the ground. She could feel bits of skin flaying off her side, though her jacket protected her from the worst of it. But her grip on the submachine gun failed and it went clattering away. Somehow, she managed to avoid hitting her head on the ground. It was a barely cognizant note to be thankful of somewhere in the recesses of her mind.
It was a good thing they hadn’t managed to accelerate any further than they had.
Hematite was in no better shape. Even discounting her missing and bleeding arm, her leg caught on the motorcycle. Where Dyna had come loose and came to a relatively safe, Hematite was pinned beneath it, too busy gripping her stump to even begin attempting to lift the bike off her.
Dyna had managed to retain a grip on her mirror. Watching the lenses, she almost wished she hadn’t.
The man with the rifle casually pulled the bolt action back. A truly massive casing popped out as he pulled a second cartridge. He chambered it, pushed the bolt action back into place, and leaned over to peer down the scope once again.
The crosshairs moved, transitioning from a signboard at the end of the street down to where she and Hematite were still on the ground. The scope focused on Dyna’s head, but quickly moved over to the mirror in her hand.
In the perspective of the mirror, she did not see a recursive perspective of the man. To him, it was just a regular reflective mirror.
And in that reflection, she saw a figure rushing down the street behind the mountain of a man.
His perspective whirled away from the scope and Dyna.
She caught a glimpse of another man, this one dressed in little more than fine trousers, a black vest, and a bright red tie. Pince-nez sunglesses obscured his eyes, but his expression of anger was clear the snarl of his lips.
A gloved fist slammed straight into the perspective on the mirror just as the lenses went black.
“I have to get up,” Dyna said to herself, barely able to hear her own words over the ringing inside her head. “I have to get up. I have to get up.”
Clenching her teeth, Dyna mustered every last scrap of willpower she had.