SHIAM Conspiracy- Book 1 (19 page)

Zak could feel her watching him in the
darkness as he began searching over more of the area with his
light, but he chose to ignore her. Not far from the line of bodies
he found that the floor had been completely swept clean. He walked
over to the concrete and ran the light in large arcs across the
floor. Why clean this section of the floor and leave the tracks on
the other side of the benches? Was it an oversight?

His light suddenly fell on something he had
missed when he first examined Gavril’s body. He could just see the
tip of the barrel beneath the dead Elf. The fact that he’d missed
it earlier picked at him. He moved back to the body and gently
lifted it for a better look. It was a Beamer Laser weapon. “Looks
like your friend is the one who got the bead on the Ork. At least
he died fighting.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your friend was the one who killed the
Ork.”

“That is not possible,” Megan said weakly,
the shock of her friend’s death returning to her as her anger
failed. “Gavril would never carry a gun much less use it on
anyone.”

Zak didn’t argue with her. He was preoccupied
again, repeatedly swinging the flashlight back and forth over the
bodies, studying every little detail. Something just didn’t make
any sense. He could understand leaving the Elves behind. But if
this was a Dhoraz operation, why leave a dead team member
behind?

Megan gathered the courage to follow the
tracks Zak had made to Gavril’s body. She knelt down and gently
stroked his hair, ignoring the small insects that were crawling
through it, her tears falling freely now.

Her grief weighed heavy on Zak as he watched
her. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and console her. He wanted
to make it all go away. But there was no way he could.

His mind snapped back to the crime scene as a
thought suddenly came to him. There was no evidence of a struggle.
So the Elves all simply stood there and allowed the Ork to execute
them? And what about Gavril? If he had a gun, why wait until all
his friends were dead before killing the Ork? And if he was the
shooter who killed the Ork, why was his body positioned as though
he had been executed the same as the other Elves...

It hit him suddenly. The Elves were all lying
in more or less a straight line, like they had simply collapsed to
the floor as they were shot. But that was against the laws of
physics where an Uk’glok is concerned. The impact from the laser
and the force of the exit should have sent each of the Elves
catapulting from where they stood. There was no way they would have
ended up in a straight line like this.

“Do you sense any magic having been used
here?” he asked Megan.

She was still bent over her friend and didn’t
bother to look over at him. “I told you there was.”

“No, I mean right here, in this very
spot.”

Megan cocked her head as though she was
suddenly concentrating on the air around her. “Yes. Yes, there is
something here, though it is very confusing. It has been masked,
but there is also some sort of distortion.”

She rose to her feet and slowly walked the
line of bodies. Turning to Zak she said, “They had no chance to
defend themselves. They were held in place using sorcery!”

It was what Zak had suspected. After they
were killed the spell was released and their dead bodies simply
dropped to the ground. By the position of his body, it would seem
that Gavril was also held and then dropped afterward. If that was
so, how did he manage to kill the Ork? And if he didn’t, who
did?

Zak slowly exhaled the frustration he felt.
He still had more questions than answers.

Z
ak’s attention was suddenly drawn back to
the soft buzz of energy that seemed now to be reaching out to him.
He and Megan had been so preoccupied with the bodies that he had
nearly forgotten about the small prefab office and the strange
energy pulsating inside it. In the darkness, he could barely make
out the dull red glow filtering through the office window. As he
watched, it grew steadily brighter, began to throb faster.

“We better have a look at whatever that is,”
Zak said, motioning toward the structure with his flashlight.

Although Megan was reluctant to leave
Gavril’s side she followed him. They approached the office
cautiously as the mysterious reaction coming from within the small
structure continued its repeating cycles of expanding energy, each
time culminating in a discharge of energy that rose up and through
the roof of the building.

Zak watched as another thin streak of reddish
light became gradually visible in the darkness, almost leisurely
expanding into a column of distorted air that shimmered and
throbbed as it drifted up toward the roof of the warehouse.

A few steps closer and he could feel the
tingling sensation of static electricity creep across his flesh. It
tickled his entire scalp, raised the hairs on his arms and the back
of his neck.

“What the frag is that?” He wasn’t really
expecting an answer from Megan. “This is close enough, I
think.”

Zak put a hand on Megan’s shoulder to prevent
her from moving any closer to the structure. She stopped
immediately without offering any resistance and stood transfixed,
staring blankly at the quickening pulse that could be seen through
the window of the room. She seemed dazed, her face expressionless.
Zak worried about her emotional state over the death of her friend
as he studied her by the light he held.

“Megan?”

She didn’t reply for a long moment. Suddenly
she blinked and her expression became anxious. “There is something
very wrong here!”

Her comment seemed rather obvious to Zak, but
all he could think to say was, “What do you mean?”

“I am not sure,” she said thoughtfully. Her
eyes seemed to glow in the dim light. “Very powerful sorcery has
been used here. I think it has been masked, just like the sorcery
at Grimrok was, but I cannot tell for certain. There is too much
interference.”

“What kind of interference?”

“I think it is coming from that.” She pointed
toward the small office in front of them.

“Can you tell what
that
is? Is it
magical?”

“It is definitely some sort of energy source,
but I have no idea what it is,” Megan said squinting to see past
the light Zak was shining at her. “I do not think the energy source
itself is magical. There is something strange about it though.
Could you get that light out of my eyes!”

“Sorry,” Zak said and lowered the flashlight.
“Can you sense anything else?”

“It is very weird,” she said. “There was
definitely more than one sorcerer involved. They used a very
sophisticated concealment spell to hide that energy source. These
guys were not amateurs. It is like this whole building is in
lockdown. The spell they used seems to be self-perpetuating. I
think it is feeding off the energy somehow, while preventing it
from being detected at the same time. The
ethereal echoes
seem to have been manipulated the same as at Grimrok, but I cannot
be certain because of all the interference.”

“What about the signatures, can you get
anything from them?”

“The same as at Grimrok, as far as I can
tell.” Megan looked directly at him. “I cannot say with any
certainty that the signatures are Orkensha, but they seem to
be.”

“Can you tell if it’s the sorcery that is
causing this energy leak or whatever it is?”

“There seems to have been a number of spells
cast here.” Megan’s brow furrowed as she concentrated. “I can only
make out the last sorcery that was used. It was a concealment
spell. And I think some sort of a containment spell was combined
with it. Whoever performed the sorcery was trying to contain the
energy as well as preventing anyone from finding it.”

“Judging by the way that stuff is shooting
out through the roof, I don’t think they did a very good job of
containment.”

“The sorcery is beginning to weaken. It seems
to be breaking down.”

“I thought you said it was
self-perpetuating?”

“Nothing lasts forever.” Megan moved toward
the office again, shaking off Zak’s grip as he attempted to stop
her. “I need a closer look!”

“Megan, no. We don’t know what this is!”

Zak cursed under his breath and followed her,
since he was unable to stop her.

The static energy grew even stronger as they
drew nearer to the source. Zak felt as though hundreds of invisible
insects were crawling over his flesh. The office was a three-meter
cube with an oversized window and door cut into the near side. As
they approached the structure the pulsing red light became clearer,
the air inside the structure seemed thick, like a dense blood fog
which hid all details of the room. It
pulsed...pulsed...pulsed...then suddenly they heard the familiar
popping sound and the red blinked to black. A moment later the
process began again.

“Zak, I am sensing a lot of power here that
has nothing to do with sorcery,” Megan said nervously. “And I get
the feeling that the suppression spell is just barely holding it
back.”

“Holding it back?”

“It is like a dam ready to burst,” she
answered.

“That’s not a good thing,” he said dryly. “Do
you think you can fix it?”

“Fix it?” She looked at him in disbelief. “I
do not even know what this is, never mind how to
fix
it
!”

“Crap!” Zak muttered his frustration. He
attempted to look through the window, keeping a discreet distance
between himself and the structure. “You have better vision than I
do. Can you see anything inside?”

“No, nothing specific.” Megan also seemed
hesitant to get any closer. She stood for several moments as though
mesmerized by the light. Finally she added, “There is
something
there. I cannot see it. I can only sense it.
Something powerful!”

He wanted to tell her that she was being a
bit melodramatic, but he felt it as well. It was like a shadow
falling over him, a sense of hopelessness threatening to push him
to the edge of despair. But it also created a strange impulse
within him. He walked the remaining distance to the office, his
mind suddenly lost to any real awareness, reaching out a hand even
as he felt reluctant to touch the door. His gaze never leaving the
window, the red pulsing light within seemed to call out to him. He
hesitated, fighting to resist and then no longer able to...

“Wait!” Megan cried out. She grabbed his arm
in time to prevent him from coming in contact with the metallic
handle. As she touched him, his compulsion to open the door
vanished.

“This is way too weird,” she said. “Let me
see if I can find anything out. I have more experience dealing with
this sort of stuff than you.”

She began chanting in a low voice. Zak
recognized the language she spoke as High Elvish, but he couldn’t
understand any of it. He barely knew the modern Elvish languages.
When she had finished her incantation, Megan reached out and gently
placed her hand upon the door.

Suddenly she began chanting more frantically,
her eyes growing wide with fright. She pulled on her hand,
attempting to free herself from the door. She became desperate,
crying out and twisting her body for leverage, but her hand
remained in firm contact with the door.

As soon as he touched her he felt it, a dark
malevolence hovering just beyond the door. It was all he could do
to maintain contact with Megan’s hand, as he struggled to peel her
frozen fingers from the doorknob.

“Help me!”

“I’m trying!”

“Get me free!”

“I’m trying!”

He struggled to free her, but to no end. It
was like her hand had been welded to the door handle. As he
continued to struggle, he heard the familiar popping sound and
suddenly she was free of the door. They both went flying backwards
from the sudden release, Zak landing upon the concrete floor with
Megan falling on top of him. His flashlight went flying out of his
hand, skidding across the floor, as Megan’s weight came down on his
midsection, punching the air from his lungs.

For a moment Zak was not aware of anything;
he was caught in a void without shape. Then suddenly he realized
that he was gasping for breath and that Megan was lying on top of
him panting heavily. She quickly rolled off him, seeming
embarrassed over her close proximity to him. They both sat there
upon the floor for several moments, trying to recover. When Zak
felt that he could breathe somewhat normally again, he reached out
and took Megan’s hand. Using his Elf vision in spite of the risk of
aggravating his headache, he checked first her hand and then the
entire length of her arm for wounds or damage of any kind.

A succession of lightning assisted his
vision. In the flashes of stark white light he could see that her
palm was red and swollen, but he detected no lacerations. He
swiveled her wrist, waiting for the next series of flashes to check
the rest of her arm. He breathed a sigh of relief when he couldn’t
detect anything further. Megan showed no sign of pain or
discomfort. She merely sat there gasping in deep breaths of air,
staring over at him with frightened eyes.

“What the frag was that!” she gasped, jerking
her hand away from him.

Zak ignored her question. There was tightness
in his chest. It was his turn for embarrassment as he realized it
was caused by his fear for her safety. Not the normal fear he
experienced in the past, when people were at risk and he was
obligated to protect them. This fear struck deeper, gripping his
very core. It was the same fear he’d felt when he’d lost his
mother. He discarded the thought immediately. How could he compare
this Elf to his mother!

“You okay?” Was all the concern he allowed
himself.

“Yeah,” Megan panted, nodding her head as
verification, but her expression wasn’t very convincing.