Nothing Broken

  Ascending Mage 4: Nothing Broken

  Frank & RaeLea Hurt

  Ascending Mage 4: Nothing Broken is Copyright ©2019 by Frank Hurt and RaeLea Hurt.

  All rights reserved.

  The people, places, and situations contained in this book are figments of the authors' squirrelish imaginations and in no way reflect real or true events.

  You can find an up-to-date list of our stories, along with bonus content and a free prequel novel at FRhurt.com

  Contents

  1. The Boss

  2. Until I Tell You to Stop

  3. You’ve Worked Your Magic

  4. Voodoo Fuckery

  5. Bucket of Cold Water

  6. Mandolin and Cheesy Snacks

  7. Keep Me In Sight

  8. Like a Punctured Balloon

  9. Some Uncalled-For Shit

  10. A Pretty Name

  11. Useless Brother Darwin

  12. Crumbs in Bed

  13. A General Pest

  14. So Dreadfully Cloak-and-Dagger

  15. Nothing Broken

  16. Vainglorious Withholder of Knowledge

  17. Brass Monkeys

  18. A Couple Good Ass-Kickings Left

  19. Meat Locker Edition

  20. Wowza Kapowza

  21. Everyone Has a Utility

  22. Get Serious Now

  23. A Barmy Bargain

  24. A Mess of Things

  25. Hyperdrive Engaged

  26. A Leaf With Balls On It

  27. God Calling

  28. Twist Your Tail

  29. I’m a Martian

  30. Not Exactly to Code

  31. The Sourpuss

  32. There You Are

  33. What Are You?

  34. Make Us Forget

  Ascending Mage 5: Changeling Uprising

  Author Notes

  Acknowledgments

  1

  The Boss

  “Why are we doing this tonight?”

  “Why not tonight?”

  “You want me to list the reasons?” Bartholomew Samson peered over the top edge of wire-rim glasses. “It’s cold. It’s a Friday night. We’ve already questioned them a half-dozen times to no end. The prisoners aren’t exactly going anywhere.”

  “Did you have big plans for tonight?” Curtis Davies snorted. “A hot date with your TV, maybe?”

  “What if I did? It wouldn’t be any business of yours.”

  “That’s pretty laughable, coming from the Director of External Relations. Isn’t that pretty much all that you do for a living: stick your nose in other people’s business?”

  Bartholomew sniffed. “That’s hardly comparable. My department serves a critical function in ensuring the sanctity of Druwish genetics and safeguarding against threats to our secrecy and identity.”

  “You’re a glorified peeping tom,” Curtis said.

  “Hardly. And you sit there throwing stones like the Department of Information is populated by angels.”

  “It’s led by one, at least. I was in the middle of polishing my halo when Elton called.”

  “Then maybe the Director of Wellness would care to contribute to the conversation with an answer?” Bartholomew asked. He stood with his arms folded, his spectacles perched near the tip of his nose. He stared at the third mage in the room and sniffed. “I just don’t see why this couldn’t wait until a more reasonable hour.”

  Elton Higginbotham had been only half-listening to the two men. He fixed his attention to the corner of the garage where a banded garden spider was repairing her web. The yellow-and-black arachnid dispensed her silk from its egg-shaped abdomen, tying the strands off at equidistant intervals to the spokes of her orb.

  When the three mages had first arrived, the prison staff was in the late stages of an office Halloween party. The garage was cleared of groundskeeping equipment and replaced with picnic tables and steel folding chairs. An attempt was made of decorating the interior of the utilitarian structure with faux cobwebs and black, plastic spiders among not-so-fake jack-o'-lanterns. An insulated water cooler dripped a saccharine, artificially fruit-scented beverage, its splashes forming a gathering pool on the swept concrete floor.

  Elton took pleasure in disbanding the party, sending the guards back to work and those who were off-duty back home. He expected to find alcohol at the party. He was disappointed to find there was none; reprimanding the staff would have added to his amusement.

  He cradled a foam cup in his hand, the coffee in it barely tasted. The warden stumbled over himself in insisting that the three mages “help themselves” to the coffee and unclaimed baked treats, even as he shuffled his grumbling staff out of the heated garage and out into the chilly evening.

  “Will wants to see the interrogation for himself,” Elton finally answered. He kept his gaze on the spider as he spoke to the other two directors. “He wanted to meet us here after his flight arrived. He should be getting here any minute.”

  Bartholomew sniffed. “His flight. You mean his chartered jet. He’s concerned about the colony’s spending right up until it comes to his comfort. Then, it’s bottomless funding.”

  Curtis shrugged. “He’s the boss.”

  “Is he though?” Bartholomew huddled beneath the overhead electric heater, attempting to absorb as much of the radiant air as he could. “When we formed this…this alliance with the others, we did so as a body of peers. We chose Billy to represent us, sure. That doesn’t make him dictator-for-life.”

  “Tell that to him when he arrives,” Elton said. “And I dare you to call him ‘Billy’ while you’re at it.”

  Bartholomew hugged himself. He muttered, “Slip of the tongue. Old habits.”

  “Bad old habit,” Curtis scolded.

  Elton brought the foam cup to his lips and sampled the bitter liquid. He wondered about the spider. She was a large one—at least an inch and a half, by his estimation. She had to have been a successful spider, feasting on flies and grasshoppers over the summer. As the threat of frost arrived, she found her way into this garage, selecting a new location in which to build a new home. The orb-weaver positioned her web in a corner above the door, out of the way from the humans who passed through the threshold each day. Far above, a lone incandescent bulb provided a yellow glow, attracting various flying insects.

  Even now, a trio of moths fluttered around the light. One of the moths ranged too close, colliding with the partially repaired web. Its wide wings fluttered furiously in an effort to break free from the trap.

  The spider reacted immediately. She flitted over her dragline silk, her long front legs reaching the prey and holding it fast as she began to bind and cover it with sticky fibroin threads.

  He had to admire it. The efficiency, the planning. The meticulous attention this simple creature possessed innately. Her offspring would doubtless inherit these traits and iterate a new generation of killers. Eat or be eaten. That was something Elton could respect.

  A pair of headlights announced the car’s arrival a moment before Curtis said, “He’s here.”

  “Time for an ass-chewing from the dictator,” Bartholomew muttered. The two mages walked past Elton and out the door.

  The Viceroy’s Buick pulled into the parking space nearest the building, its front tires stopping against the blue-painted curb before a sign featuring a wheelchair insignia. The passenger door opened, and William Roth emerged.

  Elton tossed the mostly full cup of coffee into the trash can and began to follow the others. He hesitated at the door, glancing up at the spider and the prey she was wrapping. He reached a hand up and closed it around the spider and the moth, crushing both in his grip.

  “Welcome back, Will,” Curtis said. “How was your trip to Malvern Hills?”
/>
  “Productive. Much more productive than the mess someone created for me in North Dakota.” The Viceroy opened the back door of the sedan, retrieving a briefcase. He said to his bearded driver, “It might be awhile. Wait here.”

  “I’ve got my crosswords,” the driver replied.

  Elton stood beneath a lamp post, wiping spider guts and silk from his hand with a dampened paper towel. He flashed a toothy shark grin. “You’ve got a driver now, Will? Your time in England got you acclimated to the finer things in life?”

  “A member of Security,” William said. “I’ve enlisted him as my temporary bodyguard.”

  “Bodyguard?” Bartholomew didn’t hide his incredulity. “Why do you need a bodyguard?”

  “Because someone fucked things up,” William said. He glowered at the three men. “You were supposed to take care of the troublemakers. Instead, you emboldened the family and supporters of these changelings and lost us our asset.”

  “We’ve been unable to locate the musician,” Elton said. “But we’ve got people looking for him.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m bringing in an outside crew to handle this. They should arrive tomorrow.”

  “An outside crew, Will?” Curtis looked from the Viceroy to the other men. “You mean assassins?”

  “That’s one of their skill sets, yes.”

  Bartholomew cleared his throat. “I guess it’s better to be safe. The musician has outlived his usefulness. He’s witnessed too much and if he’s no longer under Elton’s influence—”

  “We’re not killing him,” Elton said.

  “I’ve never known you to be squeamish when it comes to killing,” Bartholomew said.

  “Elton’s right,” William said. “We aren’t killing the musician. At least not yet. If we believe Ember Wright’s behind this, then that means she’s capable of undoing Elton’s Deference Spells. And if that is true, then that makes her an Inquisitor. We can’t kill him.”

  Bartholomew’s eyes were wide. “An Inquisitor? That’s all the more reason to find him and kill him, isn’t it?”

  Elton said, “Killing the musician won’t prevent her from learning what he knows. If anything, it’ll make it easier for her. For fuck’s sake, man, when was the last time you faced an Inquisitor?”

  The Director of External Relations shrugged. “When did we have the last one executed? About a hundred years ago?”

  “Have you forgotten what they can do?”

  “The whole talking to the dead thing? So what? We’ll hide the body then,” Bartholomew said. He shivered in the cool night air before adding, “We burn the body and disperse the remains.”

  “And if she’s more than a mere Inquisitor?” William asked. “A Supreme Inquisitor doesn’t need a body to perform a summoning.”

  “You think she could be a Supreme Inquisitor?” Curtis asked.

  “She could be,” William said. “I’m not willing to gamble everything we’ve worked for to take that chance. Somehow, she slipped through our nets to even become what she is today. We have to assume she’s not working alone. We have to assume that she’s more dangerous than we can afford her to be.”

  “Then what’s the plan?” Curtis asked.

  “First, I want to talk to the prisoners, see if I have any better luck gathering intel than you have with your…more traditional techniques. My outside crew will find and collect the musician. Then, we exterminate Ember Wright and anyone who knows about her.”

  2

  Until I Tell You to Stop

  Nine-tenths of North Dakota’s surface was dedicated to agriculture. The farther west one traveled, the ground contoured ever more rugged and semi-arid, suitable for grazing cattle (which outnumbered people nearly three to one). Eastward, the land became flat and the topsoil rich—some of the richest arable land in the world. It’s there that the farmers grew more spring wheat, durum, flax, peas, and beans than anywhere else on the continent.

  Midway between Pembina and Devil’s Lake was a small town called Nekoma. Surrounded in the summer by acres of light blue flax, neither the town nor the farmland was particularly noteworthy. Yet, it’s here in this unnoteworthy landscape that North Dakota’s pyramid resided.

  A sprawling facility, the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, was designed during the height of the Cold War. It was built under the auspices of protecting the country from incoming ballistic missiles arriving over the Arctic from the Soviet Union. Construction took five years and cost American taxpayers nearly six billion dollars. It became fully operational on the first day of October 1975.

  The very next day, a Congressional committee voted to deactivate the facility.

  The complex and its 100 anti-ballistic missiles were decommissioned and shut down. The launch and control facilities were mothballed, thereafter tended to by a small groundskeeping crew. And so it was that a massive, dormant pyramid came to be in the center of the continent; a concrete monolith symbolizing government waste now reduced to a local curiosity.

  At least, that’s the narrative NonDruws had been led to believe.

  The four Malverns approached the pyramid, its shape shrouded by the night. Aside from lamp posts along the ramp and over the sole entrance, the only illumination was that of red lights at the crown of the pyramid. These flashed in regular intervals, warding off low-flying aircraft.

  “I hate going in here,” Bartholomew grumbled.

  Elton agreed, but he would never admit that. The facility was designed to be simultaneously impenetrable and inescapable. Large discs made of a particular alloy were embedded to each face of the pyramid. Invisible in the night, he could feel their effects as he ascended the ramp.

  The entrance to the pyramid was a double steel door. William Roth rapped his knuckles on the door. His other hand gripped the briefcase.

  Some moments later, the door clicked and then swung open with a groan. A pale, goateed man with a wide girth blocked the door. He was dressed in the simple overalls of a groundskeeper—just as every other staff member of the facility wore.

  “Ah. Hullo,” the man said. He licked his lips nervously. “I’m Torno. Warden Torno, but you can call me Greg, if you want.”

  “Warden Torno,” William repeated. “I’m Viceroy Roth, and—”

  “Ah, I know who you are. Of course, I do,” Greg said. “I know all of you, Directors. Come on in.”

  The warden stepped back, holding the heavy door with his boot. He took his cap off, curling the visor in his hands. “Welcome to the Safeguard Complex, gentlemen. I’ll be your guide today.”

  Elton was the last to step through the threshold of the pyramid. He suppressed a gasp as he did. It was as if he physically entered, but the metaphysical part of him—call it a soul, for lack of a better term—was denied entry. He visited the prison daily since the plan went awry at the Schmitt farmstead on Tuesday. This would be his third trip into the pyramid and down into the bowels of the facility. It wasn’t getting any easier.

  “Fuck,” Curtis said. He said the word in a blunt exhale, as though someone had just knocked the wind out of him.

  “Really hate coming in here,” Bartholomew grimaced.

  “We’re here to see the newest prisoners,” William said. His briefcase handle made a squeaking protest as his grip tightened around the leather. He jutted his chin at the floor. “If you would just take us down to the Clean Room.”

  Elton noticed that the Viceroy spoke with a clenched jaw. He was feeling it too, the absence, the void. The man kept his reaction hidden, feigning indifference to the abrupt departure of mana, the sudden feeling of utter helplessness as he was made to experience life sans magic.

  Greg licked his lips. His skin was pale, untanned despite the long summer. He placed his cap back onto his balding dome and strode forward. “Ah, yep. Elevator’s right ahead. Not too many mages and changelings like being in here. Having your mana taken from you must be a little bit like a kick in the nuts. Prisoners sure as heck don’t like it none, anyway. I guess that’s why you
hire hybrids like me to work the place. Countin’ as we don’t have mana to speak of.”

  “This fucking sucks,” Curtis said.

  Bartholomew walked stiffly, a palm planted on either side of his torso. “Sooner we get this over with, the better.”

  Elton felt lightheaded and nauseous. He forced a toothy grin and said, “This is nothing. You two are just pussies, that’s all.”

  Greg produced a keycard not unlike the ones programmed to access the elevator within the Druwish embassy hidden within Parker Building in Minot. He plunged the card into a slot, prompting the access panel to chirp and light up. The warden rapidly hit a four-digit code into the keypad. Twin steel doors slid open to reveal the car waiting within.

  The concrete pyramid rose from the North Dakota prairie perhaps fifty feet. Below the surface, however, the elevator shaft descended to a depth seven times that. The only way in or out was the elevator, which struck Elton as an idiotic design choice. Sure, it meant prisoners could not escape and intruders could not enter but through one route. It also meant that should the elevators fail, the entire facility became a massive tomb until and unless they became operational again. If he wasn’t feeling claustrophobic before, he was now.

  The scent of wet concrete and mold casually enriched the stale air. Elton found himself idly wondering what manner of ventilation the facility contained, or if its designers had failed to account for such a basic function. The thought of being imprisoned in this place gave him an appreciation for what a life sentence really meant.