Feeling the Way, CH 23 (Patreon)

The button didn’t have a number on it, and the panel stretched to accommodate it. Was that what I had subconsciously registered?

The door opened on a well-lit floor that recalled the labs I’d seen, by way of a slaughterhouse. I stepped off before the doors closed and turn to confirm the door was still there.

This was clearly magic, but a type I’ve never seen. I was either squeezed between two floors out there in reality, or I had been moved to a different location. It had better be the first one, the second was too close to teleportation for my liking. It’s one thing for someone to do it. But for the magic to be harnessed and used to create a gateway? That’s terrifying. Changing the inside volume of a container I’ve seen done, although not on this scale.

The labs were delineated by a script on the floor instead of walls. I didn’t recognize it, but it brought to mind equations, which gave me a sense of who I might be dealing with. It would also match the scientific methodology the work made me think of.

We, in the magical community, tend to be grouped under all-encompassing banners. The Society is sex magic for men. The Convent is the same for women. The Ten Knives are thieves. The Green man’s followers only care about nature. Sahataan was about killing for power.

Like any generalizations, they’re wrong in that it isn’t all that we are. The Society comprises businessmen, artists, criminals. Sex powers us, but overall, it doesn’t define us. Same with the others.

One such group that has had to deal with their own generalization is the Thinkers. Because of how they think, hence the name, they come across as odd. They can think their way around reality, so that makes for weird people. And with oddness is associated madness.

The Mad Scientist.

It’s not true that all Thinkers are mad. They’re not even all that weird. But if I’m right, there is definitely one mad scientist in the bunch, more than one, if those dissecting the bodies are doing in of their own volition.

Every faction has their bad guys. Some are well known, like Damian, the Chamber, or the Stokers, others don’t do anything big enough to register beyond their immediate surroundings. The magical community is no different from any other community, except maybe in the reach the consequences can have when the bad examples let loose.

New York City anyone?

The workers didn’t acknowledge me, which made me think their will weren’t their own. They were robots, performing specific tasks. Unless I intervened in that, I doubted they’d react to me. This meant that if I could find the person running the place, I could shut them all down at once.

With almost anyone else, I’d be looking for the ‘office’. The throne room. The place they could bask in the glory of what was being accomplished for them. Fiction doesn’t have a monopoly on maniacal madmen or women. The thing with Thinkers was that they didn’t really care about glory. It was all about solving the problem. Whatever that might be, and here I had no idea what might require cutting apart people.

It also meant that instead of a throne room or the like, I was looking for someone working in one of the labs. One of the twenty or thirty labs, all of which were occupied by someone cutting up a body. How was I going to tell the Thinker apart out of—

Hold on. Not all of them were cutting up bodies.

The man behind the table over which magical screens were floating was a tall and thin ermine, or another of the slim mustelids. Charcoal fur with white lines coming out of his collar and merging into the white of his headfur.

I considered running and punching him out. I didn’t usually care for that, but there were twenty-plus bodies on tables who were murdered at this man’s orders. The problem with that was that I had no idea what safety he had in place. We know what magic can do, so we tend to protect ourselves appropriately.

And while I didn’t expect it would happen, resolving this peacefully would be nice.

I tested the ‘wall’ marked by the equation on the floor and found it insubstantial, so I stepped into his lab. Only then did his focus shift from the screens to me. Visible through them.

“Who are you?” he asked, sounding confused. He looked around. “How did you get in?”

Questions gave me hope we could talk this out. “The elevator.”

“That’s impossible,” he scoffed. “The compulsion in it keeps you from seeing the floor.”

That would explain the headache. My family can force guys to want sex. Using that on each other is part of growing up. We develop resistance to compulsions as a way to survive. For this to have affected me means it’s strong. But it also means we’ve moved away from bending space to putting an illusion over the building. Still impressive, but on a level I’m more comfortable accepting.

“Well, here I am, and you, more than anyone else, should know impossible isn’t as final as the mundanes once thought it was.” Yeah, mundane isn’t the politically correct term. But it’s just the two of us, so who cares.

“You know me?” the question came with a level of pride, and whatever meter I had running in my head, ticking toward ‘mad as a hatter’ ticks up.

“No, just that you’re a Thinker and that you’ve been kidnapping the homeless for whatever this is.” I motioned around us.

“I haven’t kidnapped anyone. I offered them a meal in exchange for helping me advance knowledge. I did feed them. Better than they had in a long time, I suspect.”

“And did you tell them that help came in the form of being killed and dissected?”

He looked at me, confused, and the meter ticks again.

“Oh, you mean this?” he motioned, beaming. “This is temporary. I have all the parts. I’ll put them back together once I’ve found my answer. They’ll be as good as new.”

I put my hands on the table and glared at him. “You can’t bring the dead back to life,” I stated.

“Yet,” he added proudly. “I’m getting close.”

I shook my head. “The gods are the only ones with the power of life over death.”

“That’s a fallacy. Just because we haven’t managed to do something doesn’t mean we can’t. How long did the non-magical throw themselves off cliffs in an attempt to fly before one of them figured out they needed to do it in a machine? Just because they couldn’t fly for millennia didn’t mean they couldn’t do it at all.” The look he gave me was that of a teacher, having explained a basic subject to his student. The read I got off him was compassion.

Another tick up.

He believed he was doing something good. He didn’t see the killing as wrong, because in his mind it wasn’t final. “Where are you keeping their soul?” 

Confusion filled his face. “Soul? That’s not a thing.”

“When you die, your god claims you.”

“But I’m not like them. I was picked by my god, infused with his power. They’re… well, not that.”

“What makes them people, then? They existed before the gods started claiming some of them as their own.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s not how it works. They’re not like me. They’re… like my automatons, going through the motion of what life is. Their purpose is to make more of themselves so the gods can find someone worthy of being picked.” He smiled. “Like me.”

Each god is different in how they pick their followers. Some are bloodline. Some have to earn it, some are just picked. I wish the one thing they could all agree on was to only take the sane ones. There would be no reasoning with this one. I reached for him and my hand passed through the neck.

He smiled. “Did you really think I’d stand here and wait for you to make your move?” the illusion said.

The impact came from behind me and sent me flying over the table and through two others, breaking them and spilling body parts over the floor. Heat on my back, the smell of burned fur as I stood.

The ermine stared at me. “How are you still alive?”

I straightened. “My name is Wyatt Orr.”

“Am I supposed to know you?” he asked.

I sighed. Of all the times for someone not to know my family. I rushed him and almost connected. My speed surprised him, but the formulas deflected the punch, and then my momentum nearly sent me off balance. A few dance steps and I was steady. In time to jump out of the way of the beam. Focused light? Concentrated fire? There were too many possibilities as to what it could be, and unlike with the Society, this wasn’t an innate ability. This was the closest thing to what mundanes think of as spellcraft. He was bending reality to his will using formulas the way we use sigils and phrases.

Unfortunately, I’m not exactly the write on-the-fly kind of guy.

I dodged another beam, which took out three labs, and rushed the Thinker. This time I saw the equations form, grabbed a table, and threw it at him. It shattered on the protection, but as I’d hoped, it disrupted it enough that my fist made it through in its wake. There was little strength to it by the time it connected with the man’s face, only enough to stagger him back, but his concentration was broken, so my next one would take his head off his body.

Or not.

He turned, and in a flutter of lab coat, vanished. I cursed. Thinkers can also write stuff down, and this one prepared a last defense.

For a moment I felt the defeat weight on me. He could be anywhere, and he’d just start this up again. Now I had two deranged killers to—

He couldn’t teleport.

Fuck, I’d almost let him escape. The were illusions. That was his thing, or at least what was easy for him. I looked around and couldn’t see him, but I did see the one way out. The elevator. I ran for it, pushed myself as hard as I could. If he reached it before me, then it was over. I slowed only enough that I was going to collide with the metal door and not run through it. Only I ran through it, and into the car, impacting the back wall, smoother than I expected. The ermine crumpled to the floor as the door closed.

I looked at his unconscious body, disappointed I wouldn’t get to give him a solid pounding. I still could, but it felt wrong to kick an unconscious man, no matter how many people he’d killed. I put him over my shoulder and pressed the button for the fourth floor.

I got stared at as I walked down the hall and I interrupted an argument between Wrong and Marrows when I entered the office. The badger looked relieved.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

“What did you do to him?” she demanded.

I held him up before her. “Is he one of yours?” I asked. I figured the company was small enough she know all the employees. If he did work here, it changed a lot of things. It’s one thing for one of us to go nuts. It’s another for mundanes to employ us to commit their atrocities.

She studied him. Approached and carefully looked him over. “No, he isn’t. What happened?” she sniffed the air and I’m reminded of my burned back. I believed her.

“He’s a Thinker. He hid one of the building’s floors from everyone and was using it to conduct experiments, killing homeless people to do them.”

Marrows whistled and took out his phone. “We’ve just crossed into FBI territories.”

I groaned. Not only is Denver where my god’s champion resides. It’s also the headquarter of the FBI’s magical enforcement division. Second-home of assistant director Zikabar Malhotra Bodenman.

“I am so fucked,” I said as the badger grinned and started talking.