Countdown

 

Dyna had a problem. Lots of problems, actually, including several that she probably didn’t even know about. But this particular problem was obvious and cumbersome. Encumbering, one might say.

Artifacts came in all shapes and sizes, as long as the artifact could be considered a single object. A pocket watch was made of many parts, but all those parts made just a watch in the end. Dyna’s mirror consisted of a case, two reflective lenses, and a camera lens, yet it was still just a spy mirror. Ruby’s gemstone was just a simple lump of ruby.

While browsing the list of artifacts, Dyna had noticed some larger objects. There was a sword, a skull with mosaic tiles covering it, and a large brass bell from a church that weighed sixty kilograms according to the database. The bell was the heaviest object in the Psychodynamics vault. Dyna had no idea how an artificer would make use of it if they bound with it. It was just too heavy to carry around regularly. Pocket watches, mirrors, puppet control rods, and the like could all fit easily into pockets.

The Ouija board wasn’t heavy, but Dyna was quickly deciding that it wouldn’t make for a good artifact. While sitting on the floor of her apartment, it seemed good enough. It gave answers to questions. But now that she was outside? It was too awkward of a shape. She carried it under one arm with the planchette half sticking out of her jacket pocket. Maybe if she had a backpack, it would have been easier, but the large board was definitely awkward to hold as she hurried down the streets of Idaho Falls.

Hematite was in trouble. Dyna was the closest person to her. Ruby was on the way, but she wouldn’t be here. Theoretically, they had time, but every time Dyna asked a question about the future, the board’s answers changed or stopped part way. It was either unreliable or Hematite was actively changing her course specifically to avoid being located. Presumably to keep her visions of a dead Ruby and Dyna from coming to fruition.

“Why do you have to be so difficult?” Dyna mumbled to herself.

“I apologize. This system is oper—”

“Not you,” Dyna said, pressing the earbud further into her ear with the same hand that held her mirror. “Hematite. Ever since I met her, she’s been… odd. Then she disappeared for a week when Cross offended her, now this? What is she thinking? Wouldn’t it be best to rush back to the institute and hide out in Psychodynamics? Surely whoever is after her wouldn’t be able to get her there. Why is she running?”

“Unknown. Hypothesis: Hematite has a perfect record. She may believe she can handle the situation on her own. Hypothesis: Hematite’s visions identify a worse outcome if she she attempts to return or involve others. Hypothesis: Hematite is picking up on additional context to her visions that inexperienced viewers such as you may fail to recognize, thus resulting in aberrant behavior. Hypothesis: Hematite’s artifact, [REDACTED], is forcing her to adjust her behavior in order to activate its effects. Hypothes—”

“Alright, alright,” Dyna said, adjusting the earbud again. She hated the things, always falling out. “Let me know if you get something a little more concrete. Until then… I’m coming up on her last known position a bit north of the park.”

“Understood. Ruby en route. Additional security team en route. Directions to your location have been updated.”

Dyna ignored the message, looking down at her mirror again. It was hard to tell exactly where Hematite was with her visions overlaid on top of reality, but Dyna had been describing streets and buildings to Beatrice over the phone as well as providing the occasional bits of useful information from the Ouija board.

Speaking of…

Setting the Ouija board down on the sidewalk, Dyna crouched down and tossed the planchette onto it. Rather than slide across or bounce or anything that a normal piece of light wood would do upon hitting a flat board, the planchette stuck to the board as if magnetized.

“What is the nearest cross-street to Hematite?” Dyna asked, paying the odd physics little mind.

The planchette moved, sliding from letter to letter. Dyna repeated the letters to Beatrice one by one. Two letters into the second street and Beatrice had the location.

“One block south of your current position. Hematite’s pace has slowed.”

“Yeah. I don’t know her that well, but based on what I see when the mirror is active, I would say that the visions are getting to her.”

“Objectives: Attempt to make contact. Encourage Hematite to wait for additional reinforcements. Discern the source of the threat. Safeguard Hematite. Safeguard yourself. Safeguard CI interests.”

“Right.” Dyna started to pick up the board again, only to pause. “Are there any threats to me in… a five block radius from my current position?”

YES

“What kind of threats are there to me?”

The planchette just shuddered, but stayed where it was. Too broad of a question, Dyna was fairly certain based on previous instances of that happening. Either that or she needed to know a bit more about what she was asking in order to get a proper answer.

“Are the threats human or entities?” Dyna asked, trying to narrow things down.

HUMAN

“Are the threats armed?”

YES

“Great.”

Every time she stopped, Dyna tried interrogating the board a bit more. She didn’t really have time to play twenty questions—Hematite was still moving away—but she was pretty sure she had at least a small picture of what the threat was. People. People much like those men who had first chased after Dyna. Another organization, likely wanting to get their hands on artifacts, even if it was at the expense of the artificer.

Scooping up the Ouija board and pocketing the planchette, Dyna shifted her mirror to the same arm that held the Ouija board, making the whole affair even more awkward. But she wanted to be ready to grab her pistol from the underarm holster inside her jacket at the first sign of anything going wrong.

Double-checking with her mirror that Hematite hadn’t sprinted off in a random direction, Dyna hurried after, following the direction Beatrice had given her. Her artifact showed Hematite turning into a small alley just before a warehouse near a large department store. She still wasn’t hurrying, but there were unfortunately no people in the alley. Dyna’s mirror lingered on Hematite’s vision for only a few seconds before the lenses went dark.

Dyna picked up the pace. Hematite was only a block away. Although the text on the signs had been scrambled into threatening messages, the buildings had been mostly the same. Upon arriving on the street, it took only a few seconds to spot which alley Hematite had entered.

She rushed down the alley, but the moment she passed a large dumpster pressed up against one wall, her mirror lit up again. She only caught it out of the corner of her eye, not even enough to recognize what she was looking at, but reflexes from training kicked in.

Dyna immediately slammed a foot into the ground, jumping to the side. If the mirror lit up when she wasn’t specifically trying to see something, it defaulted to perspectives observing her. And if someone was suddenly observing her in this situation, they probably didn’t have her best intentions in mind.

Sure enough, a foot swiped out through the air. It would have caught her just below the knee had she taken one more step.

Dyna’s free hand darted to her jacket for her gun, only to freeze as she found herself staring down a dark barrel. It was a boxy Glock, though Dyna didn’t know enough about them to identify exactly what model. She did notice that the barrel wasn’t steady, trembling in its holder’s grip.

“You?” Hematite hissed.

Dyna’s eyes snapped above the barrel. It had been less than a half hour since Dyna last saw her, but Hematite looked terrible. Her heavy makeup, formerly stylized with dark lines around her eyes, now obviously held streaks from tears. Her hair, jet black and normally a bit fluffy looking, though stiff with product, now was matted with sweat.

And she was not taking her gun off Dyna even after having obviously recognized her, though she did take her eyes off Dyna. Hematite pointedly looked down, staring at the top of the gun rather than Dyna herself.

“Why are you here?”

Dyna carefully and slowly lowered her hand from her jacket, making sure Hematite could see that it was empty. “I was worried about you,” she said, just as slowly and carefully.

“You can’t… You can’t find me.”

Dyna licked her lips, wondering if she had misinterpreted some of the answers the board had given her. Was there a threat to Dyna here? One human and armed? Yes, if she trusted the board. Was it Hematite? That, Dyna couldn’t say. There had to be someone else after Hematite based on some of the earlier questions, but at this particular moment?

It was looking like Hematite might be the threat.

“I did.”

“No. I was trying to not be found.” Hematite shook her head as if she couldn’t believe her own words. “I always win,” she said, more to herself. “Even if I don’t want to…”

Dyna didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept silent on the topic as her mind raced. Defusing Hematite seemed to be the new top priority objective for the moment. Beatrice wasn’t saying anything, possibly because she didn’t want to be a distraction in a tense situation.

“You remember what I told you about my abilities? Back when we were eating yogurt? I can see through other people’s perspectives.”

Hematite’s nose wrinkled as she bared her teeth. “You used my power against me?”

“I saw what you were going through and want to help, Hema—Jane.”

“Then you saw yourself dying and ran to your own death.” Hematite pulled back, taking one hand off her gun to press her hand to her face. “Oh god. You’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you?”

“Rest of—”

“Sapphire gets the easy jobs,” Hematite said, mumbling under her breath. “He doesn’t get dropped into the middle of a war zone to find artifacts, only to be dropped directly on top of the artifact they want with all nearby combatants dead. They don’t send him to rob a bank in Italy, only for the vault to be open already because of a door malfunction and the guards rushing to the bathroom to deal with food poisoning. He gets to sit back and think while I have to deal with…” Hematite’s eyes flicked up to Dyna’s face.

She immediately dropped the gun, turning aside toward the dumpster where she vomited up everything she had.

Dyna might have been offended that her appearance was apparently disgusting enough to warrant such a reaction if not for knowing what Hematite had likely seen. Without looking for herself, Dyna couldn’t know for sure, but she had an idea. And that idea had her closing her mirror without looking at it.

Enough facsimiles of Dyna had been wandering the streets rotted and dessicated in Hematite’s vision. She didn’t need to look at what her real self might look like dead.

Mirror put away, Dyna stepped forward, deliberately placing a foot on top of the dropped gun as she patted Hematite on the back.

“How do you do it?” Hematite asked once she got control over herself. She did not look toward Dyna.

“Do what?”

“This. Everything. Ruby, I understand. Her parents screwed up her head. But everyone else? You, Alex, Aqua, Emerald? How do you deal with this? I’ve seen Emerald smiling. I’m just…” Hematite took in a deep, shuddering breath. “They pay me. That helps. My m—I need the money. But… I’m just a normal girl.”

Dyna kept patting her on the back without saying anything. She honestly had no idea what to say or even what Hematite was really talking about. Working for the institute, obviously, but beyond that? It sounded like Hematite thought Dyna had been involved in things that Dyna had absolutely not been involved in.

“Right now, we just want to help,” Dyna said softly. “We’re going to find out what’s going on and figure out how to make it better. Even Ruby. I know she doesn’t like you much, but she’s still coming out to—”

“Coming here?” Hematite looked up, though still avoided looking directly at Dyna. “No. No no. You saw what I saw, right? Don’t you get it? You all die!”

“Ruby can’t die. I’ve seen her head get smashed into pulp and she pulled through just fine.”

“And you? You don’t care about yourself? This is what I’m talking about. You’re all so psychopathic,” she hissed, squeezing her eyes shut. “Absolutely insane, all of you.”

Dyna gave Hematite a flat look, resenting being lumped in with the rest of the artificers. From her perspective, they were the crazy ones. But…

“It’s not that I don’t care. I think we can change it. It’s like Precog 101. I’m sure you’ve sat through dozens of lectures at the institute given your power. Visions of the future are rarely set in stone. In most cases, just knowing the future causes it to change.” And if the Ouija board constantly changing answers when asked about future events didn’t prove that, Dyna wasn’t sure what did. “You said you saw a text message asking you to come over, right? Did I ever send that?”

Hematite pressed her lips together without answering.

“See?”

“I work best alone,” she mumbled.

“From what I glimpsed through my mirror, you were having a pretty terrible time. It’s okay to ask for help, you know?”

“Things work out for me as long as I follow my intuition. But you… Maybe I was only having a terrible time because you were so determined to find me.”

Dyna opened her mouth, hesitated, then snapped it shut, pressing her own lips together. Though she hated to admit it, Hematite might have a point there.

“See?” Hematite said, tone mocking. “I can do it too.”

Maybe if you had said something instead of just rushing off, Dyna didn’t say. At this point, passing blame back and forth would just lead to more arguing. She needed to deescalate the situation. “What’s done is done. We need to figure out what to do from here on. I think I have the gist of your psychic ability,” Dyna said, “but it might help if I knew exactly what your artifact does.”

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“If it is between not saying or not dying, I think I would pick the latter. Unless you think I’m just too psychopathic to make the logical choice?”

Hematite glowered, looking especially upset with the way her makeup had been ruined. Even still, she didn’t glower at Dyna, keeping her eyes firmly on the wall of the warehouse they were standing near. “Incredibly unlikely events happen around me and things just work out. Super luck, you might say, as long as I follow my intuition.”

“And, in this case, your intuition said to run off all on your own?”

“I… maybe.”

“You don’t know.”

“It isn’t exactly clear,” Hematite snapped. “I don’t have some perfect vision. I saw everyone around me dying so I figured I should get away from them. But you all are still dying. Is that your fault for chasing me or are you all going to die anyway? I don’t know.” Hematite licked her lips than spat down on the ground. “Things will work out. For me. They always do. I can’t say the same for you.”

Dyna bit her lip and glanced up and down the alley. “Are you still seeing me and Ruby dying?”

“And me,” Hematite confirmed.

Nodding, Dyna turned away from Hematite. She held out the Ouija board in front of her, trying to keep her body between the letters and Hematite. “Are there any threats to me and Hematite within five blocks?”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to change your prediction,” Dyna said, not taking her eyes off the board as it slid to the YES corner.

Given that she specified Hematite in the question, Dyna presumed that it wasn’t counting Hematite as a threat.

“Are the threats human or entity?”

H

Dyna started talking as soon as she saw the first letter. “Are the threats carrying firearms?”

YES

“Are the threats currently approaching this alley?”

NO

“Are—” Dyna clamped her mouth shut once the last answer actually registered, cutting off her next question before she could ask it. She had been planning on figuring out from what direction the threats were coming and how long it would take them to reach here, but… they weren’t coming at all?

What did that mean?

“Ask if they’re already here,” Hematite said.

Dyna tensed, snapping her neck with whiplash as she stared down either side of the alley, first to the street side then toward the parking lot around the side of the warehouse. Not seeing anything, she quickly looked up at the roofs of the warehouse and department store.

Nothing.

“Ask.”

“Is the threat already in the alley?”

NO

Well, that was a small relief. And it confirmed that the board wasn’t considering either Dyna or Hematite as the threat in question. “Is the threat observing the alley or us?”

NO

“I… is… Is the threat currently aware of myself or Hematite location?”

NO

“Alright. I think we’re safe here for a few minutes then. Beatrice, can you—”

“How long until they find us?”

Dyna glanced to Hematite to find her staring at the board. Given her aversion to it earlier, Dyna was a bit surprised at that. But it was a valid question.

Except, looking to the board, the planchette wasn’t moving. Taking a breath and clearing her throat, Dyna repeated the question herself. “How long before the threat locates us?”

This time, the planchette did move. It slid down to the row of numbers along the bottom, stopping at 9.

“Nine what?”

Moving slowly, the planchette slid directly to the left, stopping with the hole encircling the next number in sequence.

8

“Oh. Oh no.”

7

Hematite ducked down, shoving Dyna slightly to get her foot off the Glock. At the same time, Dyna fumbled with the board, holding it up against her chest after slipping her own pistol out of her holster.

She could feel the planchette, now completely ignoring the forces of gravity, slide over one slot into the 6 position.

“Do we run or hide or…”

“Where would we hide? The dumpster? They’ll surely check in there and it will limit our mobility.”

5

Dyna wanted to flip open her mirror. She didn’t have enough hands. Facing the parking lot side of the alley, she kept her eyes on the roofs overhead while trying to spot any sign of movement. Hematite, back up against Dyna, was presumably doing the same thing.

“Four,” Dyna said as she felt the planchette slip between her arm and the board. “Beatrice, we need an exit. There are two doors in the alley, neither look like they have electronic keypads.”

“Understood. Please stand by.”

3

“Don’t have time to sit around. Hack your own servers if you need to!”

“There!” Hematite called just after the planchette slid down to 2.

Dyna pivoted on her heel, bringing her gun around with only one hand to aim at…

A woman holding hands with a smaller child? It looked like the child had noticed the two people in the alley first and had tugged on his mothers arm, making her look down the alley. Or maybe Hematite’s shout had alerted both of them. They were looking regardless.

Except… the board hadn’t finished counting down yet. Both of them were aware. They couldn’t be the threat.

1

Having made the connection, Dyna was already pointing her gun down.

Hematite wasn’t. Trembling, she kept her aim.

“It’s not them!” Dyna shouted, swinging her gun-arm to knock Hematite’s aim to the side.

0

Dyna wasn’t sure whose pistol had gone off. Her finger had been around the trigger, ready to fire on their approaching assailant. Hematite’s finger had been around her own trigger. Dyna had felt the kick, but she had also felt Hematite’s arm.

Accidental discharge or a nerves-induced misfire didn’t matter. Thankfully, Dyna’s reaction had been fast enough to knock Hematite’s gun aside. The bullet, from whoever’s gun, had only struck the brick wall of the department store, sending a small shower of rocks down to the ground.

The woman, apparently realizing that these weren’t toy weapons, scooped up her kid and took off in a flash. She was gone long before the ringing in Dyna’s ears stopped.

Whoever was after them hadn’t been heading toward the alley at all. But that gunshot would certainly have alerted them. Maybe not to the alley specifically with how the sound echoed off the walls, but it would certainly have given everyone in a five-block radius a direction to head.

“Shit.”