Birthright-The Technomage Archive (27 page)

Nothing happened.

He swallowed hard and tried again, but still, his hands remained empty, and those purple faces stared at him. Mocking him.

“
You got a plan, Ternia?” Saryn called. “This stand-off is getting kind of tense.”

Ceril ignored her. Of course, he didn’t have a plan. His plan had been simple: kill the big purple things with wings. When that plan failed, he was out of ideas.

“
Yeah, a plan would be awfully nice right now, boss. I don’t bet these fellas’ll just stand and wait much longer.” A second later, Chuckie continued, “Want me to shoot em again?”

“
No,” Ceril said. “I don’t think they want to fight.”

“
What gave you a crazy idea like that?”

“
The fact that we’re not dead yet.”

“
Point taken, boss. But what do we do?”

Then, Ceril had an idea, and he hoped it wasn’t going to get him killed. He hoped that he wasn’t about to get Saryn and Chuckie killed even more. Without a word to his teammates, Ceril drew his pistol and threw it on the ground in front of the angels.

“
Ternia? What are you doing?”

Ceril kicked the pistol to the far right of the group and walked to within a few steps of the angel he had tried to cut in half. He knelt down in front of the creature and looked up. “I surrender,” he said.

***

“
My, my, boss, what a nice little cell you’ve found for us. Think you might be able to rustle us up some shackles, too?”

“
I’m sorry, Chuckie,” Ceril said, “but it was the only option we had.”

“
Like hell it was. We killed two of them easy.”

“
Yeah, we did. We basically put guns in their mouths when we killed them, too. Did you also happen to notice that any time we’ve shot at them from a distance that they’re damn near invincible? We had no choice.
I
had no choice.”

“
There’s always a choice,” Chuckie muttered. “You just didn’t want to make it.”

“
No,” Ceril said. “I didn’t. After the four of them stood there like we’d never unloaded on them, I have to say I was a little overwhelmed. And when I tried to cut one of them in half with my Flameblade, what then?”

“
You fell down.”

“
Yes, Chuckie, I fell down. Without my weapon. When I got close enough to the things to attack, my sword disappeared. I couldn’t summon it back, either.”

“
Did you try?”

“
Chuckie,” Saryn said, “be fair.” Chuckie glared at her.

“
Of course I tried, Chuckie. I’m trying right now. Somehow, they’ve cut me off from my Flameblade, and that’s never happened before. Since before we boarded the
Sigil
, it was just kind of…there. Now, I can’t seem to feel it, to find it anywhere. I’m cut off from it.”

“
I didn’t even know that was possible,” Saryn said.

“
Me, neither,” Ceril agreed. “So when I realized that I was cut off, Chuckie, and the fact that they were—let me reiterate—damn near invincible, I decided the best thing we could do was surrender. Because they obviously weren’t there to kill us.”

“
Whatever,” Chuckie said. “Like I said, it’s a nice little cell you found for us.”

Ceril looked at Saryn, who just shook her head—the universal signal for
it’s not worth it
. “You know, it actually kind of is when you think about it.”

“
I was being sarcastic, Ceril.”

“
Oh, I know that, Chuckie. But you’re right. I mean, it’s really not so bad.” Ceril stood up and began to pace the perimeter of their makeshift cell. It was really just a stone fence these days—at one point, it had probably been a hut or home of some kind, but time had been unkind to the structure. “When’s the last time you were held prisoner in a cell with no walls or ceiling? We have plenty of room to walk around, the weather’s actually not that bad since we have the breathers for the smell, and the sky is beautiful.” He craned his neck up and stared at the stars. He wasn’t wrong; the stars in this Instance were purple pricks of light in a sky swathed in faint green swirls of clouds and cosmic dust even further away.

Not so easily impressed or manipulated, Chuckie said, “All I see is a kidnapping angel on every side of me, and no roof over my head. What are we going to do if it starts to rain again, huh? We still don’t know if it’s acid rain.”

“
Conjure a roof, then, an umbrella or something. There’s not a thunderhead in sight, Chuckie. I don’t think it’s going to rain. Relax.”

“
I don’t mean to sound like I’m on Chuckie’s side, Ternia, but what’s gotten into you? How can you see this situation as being a good thing? We’re being held prisoner.”

Ceril shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just have a feeling that if they were going to hurt us, we’d be hurt already, and since Harlo and Swinton aren’t here with us, there’s a rescue party out there coming for us.”

“
Maybe,” Chuckie said.

“
Definitely,” Ceril corrected.

Chuckie stood up. “Enough of this crap. I know you’re the boss and all that, but this is garbage. We’re getting out of here.
I’m
getting out of here. Before it’s not my decision to make.” He walked quickly over the broken ruin that made the cell’s boundary, and the second his foot hit the ground outside, the closest guardian angel whipped his hand around and slammed it into Chuckie’s sternum.

Chuckie fell to the ground, and all the air left his lungs. He wheezed as he stared at the angel, who had already resumed his previous, stoic position. Chuckie charged again, this time getting both feet over the broken foundation before being knocked back inside where he was supposed to be.

“
Okay, then,” Chuckie said, “maybe I’m not.”

Ceril suppressed a smile and sat down beside Chuckie. “Look, I know it’s not ideal, being kept inside what’s left of an old building like we’re chickens in a pen, but it’s where we are. I have a couple of ideas on how to get out of here, but I’m going to need some time to work them out. In the morning, I think we’ll have a better chance at it, anyway. We get away right now, where do we go?”

“
Out there.” Chuckie waved his arm in an arc.

“
Which is where? We have no idea where we are, and in case you haven’t noticed, Chuckie, this Instance hasn’t been the friendliest place we’ve ever been. So I’m asking you as a friend, not telling you as your commanding officer, to give me until morning to work out some way for us to get out of here.”

Chuckie grumbled something incoherent, and then lay back and stared at the sky.

“
Chuckie? What was that?” Ceril asked.

“
Fine,” Chuckie said. “But we’re getting out of here in the morning. One way or another.”

“
At least we don’t disagree on that.”

Chapter Nineteen

Damien was hungry. The one piece of fruit he had eaten a few hours ago was long gone. Once the elevator dropped him off at the third-floor dining hall, the smells of so many different foods wafting over him made his stomach rumble. Aside from the fruit, he had scavenged here and there but had not eaten a full meal since the night his home had been invaded.

“
Visitor, please enjoy your time at the Ennd's Academy dining hall. May I recommend…” The voice trailed off as Damien walked quickly out of earshot. He had no intention of getting food recommendations from something that could not eat.

He stalked directly toward one of the self-service stations and made himself a sandwich. The dining hall was big and round; students and faculty mingled here, but he thought the size would allow him to blend in well enough that he wouldn’t seem out of place. He chose a seat by the only window in the hall, one that made up a good quarter of the circular room’s wall. It overlooked an interior courtyard, which was perfect for Damien's needs. He sat and ate his sandwich as he surveyed the school’s basic architecture. He had to see what else had changed since he left.

Two small spires shot up from the ground of the courtyard, though he could not see how tall they were from his table. Across the courtyard, he could see Ennd’s central tower, and that's where Damien focused most of his attention. That one structure dwarfed everything else about Ennd's. That's where the Library had been once upon a time and should still remain. Instance physics were unlikely to have changed too much in recent years. Or, well, ever. No amount of renovation would be able to change the laws of the universe.

However, the renovation that the technomages had instituted would make it impossible to know which floor the entrance would be on, but he was still confident that he could find a way in. Space and location were imperative to Instancing, sure, but it was all relative. As long as the portal was in the general vicinity of the energy pocket, it would open. The portal being shifted a few stories in one way or another would not prevent access.

He finished his food, glad to have some protein in his system, and looked at the central tower a moment longer before moving away from the window and toward a corridor that hopefully led to the Library, and in turn, to Headmaster Gilbert Squalt. He casually worked his way through the crowd, nodding at people when they made eye contact—he had to be careful not to call attention to himself by seeming too anxious. He even tossed his trash in a receptacle as he passed it.

As he approached the hallway, his left hand tingled. It was not exactly painful, but it was more than just an itch. It was probably an alert, a warning. Damien assumed the sensation was caused by being too close to a restricted area access point.

So he kept walking.

As he entered the hallway, the tingling became more insistent, verging on painful, but he pushed through. If he had known a little tingling in his hand was going to be the school’s best attempt at confining him, he would have marched his way through the halls hours ago.

And then he stopped. Or more accurately, his left hand—the one containing the nanite stamp—stopped while the rest of his body kept going. He was thrown off balance and just barely managed to avoid falling completely. His body was free to move, but his left hand hung suspended in midair. He could not, with any amount of force, pull his hand any further down the hall. It was as though his wrist were a gigantic square peg trying to fit through a very tiny round hole.

Damien felt around with his right hand, and there was nothing in the air holding him. No invisible walls had clamped down on him.

He could walk backward, though. He was perfectly free to move back into the dining area.
So this
, he thought,
is how they keep visitors in line; by putting us in invisible cages
. He realized that he had spent probably the last two minutes struggling with his own left hand, and he wondered how that might have looked to anyone who was watching. He looked back toward the dining area and was pleased to see that the corridor had just begun to curve when he hit this invisible boundary. He could only see a small section of the dining hall around the curve, and there were only two tables with line of sight to him. No one was sitting at either of them. Yet.

Damien figured that with the size of the crowd in the dining hall, they would not stay unoccupied for long. He had to make a decision, and he had to make it fast. He could go back the way he came and search for another route to the central tower, or he could figure out a way to free his hand and make those tingling nanites stop restricting his access.

When he thought about his options, he realized how much being away from the Charons for so long had affected him. Ennd's was tracking his whereabouts and restricting his access with
nanites
and the unique signature they emitted. If there was one thing Damien Vennar understood, it was how to manipulate nanotechnology. Until his home was invaded, he had not Conjured in centuries. Most Charons would never be able to Conjure invisibility as rapidly or as effectively as he had, but like almost anything else, once you knew how to do something, the skill was rarely completely lost. Proficiency may deteriorate, yes, but with a little practice, you could easily regain whatever atrophied through inactivity.

Damien's control of nanotech was no different, and he focused his attention on the visitor's pass stamped into his hand.

The old man edged as far along the curved wall as the nanites allowed, and he dropped to his knees. His trapped hand supported much of his weight. That way, when he was finished with his purge, he would know immediately by having his hand come free.

Damien Vennar was very aware of the nanites that made up his bloodstream. At one point in his life, he could have controlled them on an almost one-by-one basis. He expected that ability to have atrophied, but he still had a very keen grasp of what was going on inside his flesh. He closed his eyes and directed his attention to finding the foreign nanites within him. He took on himself the role his immune system played on a day-to-day basis: hunting down anything foreign and destroying it. Only this time, he was searching for any nanotechnology inside him that was not a part of the self-replicating, self-repairing system coursing through his veins already.

He entered a state of meditation, as he focused almost all of his attention on eliminating the microscopic machines that were restraining him. One by one, he found the foreign bodies and destroyed them. When the very last one went offline and its signal interrupted, the old man stumbled backward. He fell onto his back and smiled. He had missed the rush that came with Conjuring.

He flexed his now-free wrist. Without the molecular stamp in his skin, he would be able to move through the halls unhindered. He made one last look toward the dining hall to make sure no one had seen him, then stood up and continued down the hallway unnoticed.

***

The moment when Damien Vennar sought out and destroyed the nanotechnology in his visitor’s pass, Ennd’s security system initialized. He had been noticed the moment the last nanite had been eliminated. One moment, Vennar had been in a hallway that led to the Phase II student dormitories; the next, he had disappeared from sensors, and Phase II’s defenses were activated.