Spell Robbers (21 page)

“Poole is gone,” Ronin said. “But the Dread Cloaks remain with a new leader.”

“The rival that drove Poole out?” Mr. Weathersky said.

Ronin shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“What happens now?” Mr. Weathersky asked.

Ronin pulled the augmenter gun out from behind his back. “I’m going to put this here.” He bent over and set the gun on the stage. “And I’m going to let you all fight it out.”

Ben’s darting gaze turned frantic. This was going to be a massive firefight. He had to get Sasha out of there. Peter, too. He grabbed them both by the arm and pulled them toward the door. Peter caught on and came on his own, but he had to tug on Sasha.

The League agents had turned their attention upward, but in the shadows they didn’t know what or who to aim at. The Dread Cloaks had the advantage. Ronin backed away from the augmenter gun with his hands raised.

“You have a choice, Old One,” he said, approaching the shadows. “You can follow me, or you can try to keep the augmenter out of Dread Cloak hands.” As he disappeared behind the stage, he made eye contact with Ben. Then he looked at Sasha. He smiled again, and faded away.

“Agents,” Mr. Weathersky said, “be —”

The air filled with a deafening explosion as lightning, fire, and ice shot down, striking the arena floor and a few League agents. They all scrambled for cover, returning fire randomly. Mr. Weathersky charged fearlessly through the barrage toward the stage.

“Let’s get out of here!” Ben shouted. He led the way, Peter and Sasha behind him.

They raced out into the amusement park, and Ben looked around for a place they could hide. Once Mr. Weathersky got his hands on the augmenter, he would try to get it out of there, and the battle would move outside. He needed to find a safe place for them before that happened.

“But the League,” Sasha said. “My friends.”

“Let them fight it out over that augmenter,” Ben said. “That was Mr. Weathersky’s choice. You don’t owe them anything, especially after what they did to you.”

Sasha looked back through the doors, clearly torn.

“Look,” Ben said. “I think Ronin will come find us. You are what’s most important to him.”

“I think Ben is right,” Peter said.

Ben looked around for a place they could go to hide and wait. One of the other buildings, maybe. The House of Mirrors was the closest.

“This way,” he said.

Sasha shook her head. “But —”

Ben looked at Peter, and together they pulled Sasha along between them. When they reached the building, they found the doors locked, but Ben kicked them open. The doors burst inward, and the three of them went inside.

They were in an open, mirrored entryway, with two hallways leading off to either side. “We’ll wait here,” Ben said. “Ronin will find us.”

“No.” Sasha pulled off her helmet and dug her fingers through her hair. “No, you don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand what?” Peter asked.

“Ronin is not my father.”

“WHAT?”
Ben said.

Sasha started pacing around the House of Mirrors
entryway. “Ronin is not my father.”

Peter cocked his head. “But —”

“It was Mr. Weathersky’s idea,” she said. “The League never had Ronin’s daughter. But we had to find a way to get the portable augmenter back.”

Ben’s stomach fell. Mr. Weathersky had lied again, and he had lied about the very thing Ben had thought he wouldn’t. Even Ronin had believed him. It didn’t seem like there was anything the League wouldn’t do.

This wasn’t right. For Ronin, this would be like killing his daughter all over again.

Ben looked hard at Sasha. “You went along with this?”

“They were my orders,” she said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“And what about other kinds of detachment? You lied to me?”

“No. That is still true.”

“But —”

“Now is not the time, Ben.”

She was right. They had to deal with Ronin first. “We can’t do this to him. We have to hide you.”

“Hide where?” Sasha asked.

Ben looked down the nearest hallway. “Deeper inside the building. Come on.”

The three of them dove ahead, into a mirrored corridor. But the angles had already started to fragment what they were seeing, splitting and multiplying, casting the reflections of endless edges and passages away from them. They slowed down, but pressed forward, entering a chamber where Ben almost wanted to grab onto Sasha and Peter to remind himself which were the real ones and which were the illusions.

They went down another passageway, and entered a second chamber, and then a third. That was when they heard a distant voice.

“Ben?”

It was Ronin.

“I know you’re in here,” he said. “I saw the door kicked in. You have my daughter?”

Ben put his fingers to his lips, and Sasha and Peter nodded. They held still, listening.

“Just give me my daughter,” Ronin said. “Please. You, of all people, know what this means. What the League did to me.”

His voice moved. It sounded as though he had entered the hallway.

“I’m sorry for taking off the way I did,” Ronin said. “I had to make sure Mr. Weathersky would make good on his promise. The augmenter was the only leverage I had.”

He was coming toward them, getting closer.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Please.”

Ben wondered if they should get actuations ready. Ronin would sense that, and it might give them away. But he was going to find them at any moment. The building only had the illusion of size, and there were really only a few feet and a few mirrors between them and him.

Ben was trying to decide which actuation to summon, when Ronin’s voice came from just around the corner.

“I only want to see her,” he said.

Then Ronin came around the corner, and he stopped short. He stared at Sasha. Tears welled up in his eyes.

“Stay back!” Peter shouted.

But Ronin acted as if he hadn’t even heard him, and came into the chamber.

Ben sensed Peter readying an actuation, and he reached out and grabbed him. “Don’t.”

Peter looked back and forth between Ben and Ronin, and Ben felt the energy dissipate.

Ronin walked up to Sasha and looked down at her. She held her ground, looking back up at him. He smiled, and seemed to be studying her face, looking at both sides. He looked directly into her eyes for a long while. But gradually, the smile he wore faded away. The tears in his eyes dried up. His head and shoulders fell.

“You’re not,” he whispered.

Sasha shook her head. “How could you tell?”

“I see none of my wife in you. None of my daughter’s mother.”

“I’m sorry,” Sasha whispered.

Ronin said nothing, and several minutes passed.

Ben wanted to say something to him, but there was nothing that would comfort him. Nothing that could bring his daughter back. Just like there was nothing Ben could say to his mother to remind her who he was.

From outside the building, they heard a sudden boom. Sasha and Peter flinched. The battle must have spilled out of the arena. Ronin straightened and looked at Ben.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he said. “I’m sorry for what the League did to you.”

“What about what you did to me?” Ben stepped toward him. “The League refused to reattach me to my mom until they get the augmenter gun back. And you stole it!”

“Kid.” Ronin put both hands on Ben’s shoulders. “I want you to listen carefully to me. The League lied to you. They can’t reattach you. Detachment is not reversible.”

Ben’s vision started to go dark at the edges, turning into a tunnel. At the center, Ronin’s rough face looked at him with an expression of pity, but everything else was a blur. He started feeling light-headed. This could not be happening. All he’d worked for, all he’d done. Detachment couldn’t be permanent.

“You’re lying,” Ben whispered.

“I’m not,” Ronin said. “I’ve got no reason to lie to you. But the League had every reason to tell you what you wanted to hear.”

Shock caught the words in Ben’s throat, and stuck his mouth shut. He just stared.

“Ben,” Peter said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too,” Sasha said.

There wasn’t anything to be sorry for. This couldn’t be true. Maybe Ronin didn’t think detachment was reversible, but that didn’t mean it was true. The League could reattach him. They
had
to.

“I’m sorry, too,” Ronin said. “All of this for something that doesn’t even work.”

“What?” Peter asked.

“The portable augmenter doesn’t work,” Ronin said. “I spent days trying, and it never did anything. It’s not just unreliable. It’s not functional.”

“But …” Ben recovered his voice. He rubbed his head. “I used it. It worked for me.”

“Not as an augmenter,” Ronin said. “Maybe it worked like a Locus for you. You just didn’t realize it.” He turned away from them. “I’m getting out of here, somewhere the League will never find me. But before I go, let me just say this, kid. Now that you know the truth about everything, what you do from here is up to you. You’re not their hostage anymore.”

Ronin left.

The word echoed in Ben’s mind.
Hostage
. That was the truth of it. The League had kept Ben in a kind of prison, using what was most important to him to control him. Well, he was done being controlled. He was breaking free. Right now.

He turned to look at Peter and Sasha. “You might not want to come with me.”

“Where are you going?” Peter asked.

“To find out the truth.” Ben stalked away from them, back through the mirrored hallways to the entryway, and then out into the park, right into the middle of a battle.

Quantum League agents and Dread Cloaks had taken up defensive positions around the promenade, behind booths and buildings, exchanging fire. Actuations flew between them. Walls shattered and exploded. Agents and Dread Cloaks fell. The air smelled of ozone from all the lightning and smoke from all the fireballs. The carousel was in a blaze nearby, the horses seeming to writhe in a fiery death.

Ben pulled out his Locus. He stared at it in his hand. Then he tossed it to the ground. He didn’t need it. It didn’t control him, either. He was not at the mercy of anyone, or anything. From now on, he controlled himself.

He closed his eyes and reached for the storm churning inside him. All the pain and all the anger. He wound it all together, pulling the vortex tighter and tighter. He imagined the air around him getting hot, the molecules jostling and bouncing off one another, generating friction. This heat rose up, through the cooler air above it, and he stretched the column tight, setting it rotating. Faster, and faster, fueled by the energy of his own spinning world.

He opened his eyes.

A whirlwind towered before him, as tall as the Ferris wheel. Its foot clawed at the ground, raking up dirt and debris and sending it shooting upward and outward. Ben held the tornado in place for a moment longer, noticing that the battle had stopped. He would show them all.

He released the whirlwind, and it charged forward, striking the first building. The shriek of splintering wood filled the air as it tore the booth to pieces. Then it moved on to the next building, voracious, and destroyed it, too.

Agents and Dread Cloaks scattered before it.

Who was in control now?

“Ben!” Peter had followed him outside, and stood beside him. “You have to stop this!”

“Why?” Ben asked. “After what they did to you and me? Why should I stop this?”

“Some of them are my friends!” Sasha said on his other side. She grabbed him. “Stop this before you hurt someone!”

“Hurt someone? They were killing each other out here! The Dread Cloaks would have killed me!” Ben shouted. “The League detached me!”

The tornado kept going, annihilating everything in its path.

“But this isn’t the way!” Sasha said. “You’re hurting good people, too!”

She was right. Some of the agents might even be like him: angry, betrayed, and confused. He hadn’t stopped to think about them until now. Hadn’t stopped to think about the cost. That was something Mr. Weathersky would do. Not Ben. When he realized that, the storm inside him broke apart. The anger faded, even though the pain remained.

But the tornado kept going.

Ben closed his eyes and reached out for it with his consciousness. He felt for the air currents, and imagined the temperature above the cyclone rising, throwing off the difference in pressure that kept the whirlwind going. He imagined it scattering in the same way he’d imagined it forming.

But when he opened his eyes, it was still there.

He closed his eyes and tried again. He failed.

He couldn’t undo the actuation. It raged on, tearing and breaking and shattering everything it seized, and he remembered the warning Dr. Hughes had given him that day in her office. That this power could get away from him. That he could lose control of it.

He turned to Peter. “I can’t stop it.”

“Look!” Sasha pointed.

Some distance away from them, Mr. Weathersky strode forward down the middle of the promenade toward the tornado. Then he stopped, buffeted by the winds, closed his eyes, and lifted his hands into the air. Ben could feel the force and strength of the actuation Mr. Weathersky summoned from where he stood.

Moments later, the tornado went to tatters, dropping its debris to the ground, and it vanished.

The silent aftermath didn’t last long before the Dread Cloaks began a retreat, scattering in all directions. Some of the League agents regrouped and pursued them. Others began actuating rain and water to extinguish the fires burning around them. But Mr. Weathersky stood where he was. He turned toward Ben.

Ben took a deep breath. It was time for the truth. He left the House of Mirrors and marched toward the Old One.

“That was a Class Three actuation, Ben,” Mr. Weathersky said as Ben approached him. “I had no idea of your potential.”

Ben ignored him. “You have the portable augmenter. Now reattach me.”

Mr. Weathersky put his hands in his pockets. “Ben —”

“REATTACH ME!”

“I can’t,” Mr. Weathersky said. “Reattachment isn’t possible. I’m sorry.”

Ben thought about Agent Spear’s promise. He thought about Mr. Weathersky, and the lies he had told Ronin, realizing that he had been blind to the lies the Old One had told him because he hadn’t wanted to know the truth.

The truth was that his mom didn’t know him anymore. He had never even existed to her.

The truth was that she was alone.

Ben was alone.

Tears rose, and an emptiness spread through him. He became a shell, as fragile as an empty egg, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Mr. Weathersky said. “We did what we needed to do for the good of everyone. We will continue to do so. That is the mandate of the Quantum League.”

“It isn’t my mandate,” Ben said. “And I won’t be a part of it.”

“What are you saying?” Mr. Weathersky asked.

“I’m leaving,” Ben said.

“You can’t,” Mr. Weathersky said. “Someone with your potential must be —”

“Are you going to stop me?” Ben felt the emptiness inside him filling back up, but with the same pain and anger that had produced the tornado. “You want another Class Three on your hands? An even bigger one?”

Mr. Weathersky swallowed.

Ben walked away from him, preparing for the director to try to attack him. But he felt no actuations rising. Nothing. Ben kept going, but a few steps later, Peter and Sasha stepped in front of him.

“Don’t go,” Peter said.

“I have to,” Ben said. “This is my choice. Now that Dr. Hughes is safe, there’s nothing left for me here.” He paused. He knew how that sounded. Peter was his friend. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Peter’s eyes watered. “I — I can’t. This is where I belong.”

Ben nodded. “Okay, then.”

“Please,” Sasha said. “Stay.”

“I’m sorry.” Ben pushed between them both. Sasha had been right. There were other kinds of detachment, and they were just as real. They hurt just as bad.

“Where will you go?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He looked back at them, and beyond them to Mr. Weathersky. “I’m going to find a way to reattach myself.”