“Is it Network?”
“Not that I am aware of,” Shade said. “Perhaps you should see for yourself.”
Jason closed his eyes and sank his consciousness, projecting his senses through Shade’s distant body. It occupied an innocuous shadow on the grounds of Jason’s old school. He immediately spotted his twelve-year-old niece, Emi, in the same academy uniform he once wore. She was marching up to a group of boys picking on another student.
“Leave him alone, Bryce,” she said to the obvious ringleader. Bryce was quite a bit larger than her, but she positioned herself between him and the boy slinking against the wall in fear. She planted her feet in front of Bryce and tilted her head back to glare up at him.
“Screw off, Emi,” Bryce said.
“Not going to happen, Bryce,” she said.
“Are you looking to get beaten up?”
“Where did you learn to bully people?” she asked. “Eighties movies? Do it online like a regular person.”
“I’m not afraid to hit a girl, Emi.”
Emi smiled at him like he was an idiot.
“The way I see it, Bryce, you have three options. One, you walk away. Spoiler: this is the smart choice. Option two is that you and your friends beat up a girl, which will not go well for you. Option three is a girl beats you up, which will go even worse. So, are you going to back it up or get yourself in more trouble than your daddy can get you out of?”
“You think I’m afraid of you?” Bryce snarled.
“No,” Emi said. “I think you’re afraid of what happens when my mum changes her mind about catering your mum’s party, though. How does your dad normally take it when you stop your mother from getting something she wants? Sorry, stepmother. The new one is quite pretty, isn’t she?”
Bryce paled.
“I’m going to let you go this time,” he said, and started to leave. “Count yourself lucky.”
Emi turned her gaze to the boy up against the wall.
“Thanks, Emi,” he said miserably.
“Grow some balls, Hunter,” she told him. “Your name literally means someone who kills things.”
Jason withdrew his senses from Shade with a chuckle.
“She hasn’t changed,” he said happily.
“She seems quite intelligent for her age,” Shade said. “I believe I recognised some behavioural traits there.”
“Yeah, she’s smart like her mum.”
Jason opened his inventory to the outfit tabs. His old iron-rank combat robes had significantly more grey than his black bronze-rank one. The outfit was distinct enough from the images of the Starlight Rider that he was satisfied. He closed his inventory and went out where Hiro and Taika were watching more of Jason’s interdimensional travel vlog.
“Bro, your friend looks like Ron Perlman from that show with the woman from Terminator 2.”
“Gary? Yeah, he’s a great guy. Where did you put that lightsaber?”
“Still in the kitchen,” Taika said.
“So, you’re going to the party?” Hiro asked.
“Yeah,” Jason said.
“I wanted to go too,” Taika said. “I don’t have a costume or know any of your family, though. I just like parties.”
26
IT’S COMPLICATED
The naked woman’s feet trailed on the floor as she was dragged through concrete halls, not cooperating even enough to stumble along. The closest thing she had to clothing was the collar around her neck. They only used category-two guards for her, which tied up some of their most valuable personnel. After what she had done to the category ones in her first escape attempt, though, it was a necessary allocation of resources. They dumped her in a plain concrete room. They moved her around a lot, never anywhere better.
The magical array securing the complex had been engraved right into the concrete. Every door was magically locked, which meant that the collared inmates would be unable to open them, even if they had the chance. Her captors were unconcerned about letting the inmates see it; they were all collared and unable to so much as explore the array with their mystical senses, let alone grasp their function.
The guards were trying to keep her on edge, never giving her anything reliable or consistent, even in the miserable conditions. Sometimes there was a steel cot with no bedding, other times a plain mattress on the floor. She was never left in the dark and her sleep never went uninterrupted by blasting music or being hosed down with water. They knew she could handle the wet and the cold, and consistently denied her bed, blanket, or clothes. All she wore was the suppression collar.
The only exceptions were short periods when she was given a warm bed and uninterrupted rest. These brief interludes were only given as fleeting samples of what capitulation could offer.
Two men watched her through a security monitor. Adrien was older, his stern features unflinching as he observed the woman on the screen. Michel was younger and visibly uncomfortable.
“We don’t even know if she can understand what we’re saying to her,” Michel said.
“She understands,” Adrien responded without turning his gaze from the monitor. He had no need to look to sense his subordinate’s distaste for the methodology being employed.
“This isn’t working,” Michel said.
“She’s strong,” Adrien said, “but that’s good for us. The impediment is hope. It’s only been a few days and she still thinks there is something other than surrender. In time, the hope will die.”
In her concrete box, the woman bided her time, reserving her strength. Her collar-suppressed senses were unable to explore the magic engraved into the walls and floors and ceilings. Instead, as the guards dragged her through the hallways that made up the concrete warren, she mapped the engravings with her eyes the same way she mapped the layout.
Her escape attempts were never the earnest attempts to break free that her captors believed. She had let them think she was turned around in the rat nest of subterranean tunnels. It never occurred to them that her understanding of ritual emplacements was sufficient to grasp their function from visual inspection alone. Each escape attempt, a seeming scramble to find a path out, was actually intended to get her eyes on crucial elements of the magic array that her captors had not led her past themselves.
Just as she plotted out the layout of the complex in her head, she plotted out the workings of the magical array. She was approaching the point where she would understand enough of it to extrapolate the rest, after which point it became a matter of how to turn it to her own ends. In the meantime, she would endure whatever indignities they chose to inflict.
Erika put her phone away.
“Mum sent her apologies,” she said, leaning into her husband, Ian. “Via text.”