Mana System Chapter 145: Setting the lure (Patreon)

It took Timothy a week to finish fabricating the last of the disks for my project. It was good timing because the dry dock was almost complete. I thanked the man for his work and told him to take off until the dry dock was ready and the barge was in place. I paid him with the money I earned from the town. I essentially signed a contract to build the wall and add other fortifications. The money wouldn’t be paid all at once, as to not bankrupt the town. Instead, I agreed to installments as well as free room and board for my employees until the work was complete.

It gave me a steady flow of incoming capital to continue to pay my small workforce but it was enough. If I needed a cash infusion, I could sell some runic items. My employees were happy to finally be out of living in the warehouse, especially Maria who was forced to live with three other guys. Although, I think she liked the attention of being the only female, the other guys treated her like a daughter. Timothy was the only married one and he and his wife had purchased an abandoned home from the city.

I let my employees know I would be gone for a few days, but they didn’t need to be told what to do. Maria, I gave a few days off to spend about the town after she docked the barge. It's not like she had anything she could help with while the barge was being completed. With a final wave, I got aboard the fortress and lifted off.

***

A nondescript man watched quietly from the shadows of an abandoned house. He was almost a mile away but he had a clear line of sight to the pier and the magical construct his target called the Fortress. He wasn’t the only person keeping tabs on this man. Others within the city watched his every move. They had only lost sight of him when he entered his fortified warehouse or the fortress. It wasn’t ideal but they made it work.

Another watcher, placed within the thin forest outside of town watched a strange object hurtle down from the fortress. She noted the incident and waited for the fortress to leave before she went to check out the landing site.

***

“What do you mean unknown objects?” Stone asked one of her scouts.

“The objects were released from the fortress and impacted the ground. All signs around the impact spots indicate the devices either exploded upon impact or were destroyed.”

Stone paused, “how similar are the impact craters?”

The scout looked through her notes. “Almost identical,” she replied.

“That crafty bastard, he’s up to something. Keep an eye on the sites, I will see if I can get approval for a retrieval team to look over one of the craters for any clues.”

The scout nodded and walked away.

Everything about this screamed of a trap to Stone but she couldn’t figure out what the trap was. One thing she knew for certain was whatever that man was up to, did not bode well for the Order.

She quickly hurried down the hallway to the mirror room. The council needed to vote on this topic. As she shut the door that closed off the strange room, the wall shimmered to life as the mercury-like substance poured down the back wall in a constant flow.

Most people wouldn’t recognize a node terminal if they came across it, but she and the other members of the Order controlled over a dozen of the sites. The Seer was part of the nodes but it also allowed communication across even interstellar distances. Not that they had any operatives off-world.

She waved her hand through the metallic liquid and spoke a few words of magic to activate the device.

It didn’t take long for the silverly liquid to show the faces of other members.

When the last one was filled she called the meeting to order.

“I need a vote on whether or not to send a retrieval team to secure a device that Paul Fuller has created.”

“And what is the purpose of this device?” one of the others asked.

“We are unsure.”

There were murmurs among the others that it was likely a trap, designed to lure them in. Stone cut the conversation off.

“I am aware that this is likely a trap but we need to determine what these items are. What if they are large-scale teleportation scramblers?” she asked, positing her best guess.

Mr. Nobody leaned forward, “And what if that is exactly what he wants you to think? Perhaps we should pull all of our scouts back and leave the man to his own devices?”

Stone frowned. Mr. Nobody was the only other council member she had met. The others were more insular in their dealings.

“You propose to let one of the most dangerous individuals to the future of mankind to his own devices?” she asked in astonishment.

“Says who?” he replied in kind. “The Seer has told us that the lines of the future especially involving Mr. Fuller are becoming hard to read. That does not mean he is a danger to humanity.”

Stone clenched her fist, Mr. Nobody had been opposed to her since Paul Fuller had first become an issue.

“I propose we vote now. I vote to deploy the team.”

“Opposed,” Mr. Nobody replied quietly.

The vote came down with only one other vote in her favor. She gritted her teeth and swiped her hand through the liquid, canceling the session. If those fools didn’t see the danger this man posed, she would deal with it herself. It would cost her some favors, but she had just the team in mind.

***

I was honestly not expecting much action on my detectors but the damn things were lighting up like Christmas trees. I had detected over a dozen confirmed teleportations in less than a week. Some were near my drop sites, giving me much better signal strength which allowed me to adjust the detectors for my next batch.

It seemed they were interested in one particular detector. It was probably because it was the furthest away from the city. I wasn’t able to see what was happening near the detector but after a half-hour, the signal went dead. Less than thirty seconds after that six signals flashed away through a portal. I headed over with the fortress to see what happened.

I was doing exactly as the Stygian Order expected of me, and I smiled.

As I expected, they had tried to dig up the device, only to have it blow up in their face. There was a significant amount of blood around the blast hole, telling a pretty damning story of what occurred. I kicked a piece of shrapnel down the crater and walked back to the fortress with a worried frown on my face. Let them think I was worried about the loss of the item.

***

“What the hell happened!” Stone yelled as five beat-up survivors returned, carry one dead.

“It was a trap!” Jacob growled, spitting out some blood. “Damn thing exploded as soon as we got within two feet. Lenny took a piece of shrapnel straight through the eye and right into his brain. He died instantly.”

Stone slammed her first into the wall, causing it to crack. She hadn’t told her team of the possibility that it was a trap. “Alright, get to medical and get those wounds treated. I will debrief you in half an hour.”

Stone watched the five hobble off, while she panicked internally. If she had recovered something of value she could have talked her way out of this mess. But now it was too late, she needed to cover this mess up as quickly and quietly as possible so she hurried to her office. She froze when she opened her door and saw Mr. Nobody sitting behind her desk with his feet propped up.

“Have a seat please,” the man said in a casual tone.

Stone’s first instinct was to bolt for it but she knew she wouldn’t get far. They didn’t call Mr. Nobody, the hunter, for nothing.

She woodenly took a seat across from the quiet unassuming man.

“You went against the vote, Stone.”

“I had my reasons,” she ground out.

“I’m sure you did, and they may have even been good and justified but that’s not how we operate. You know that.”

“You know as well as I that the lines of the future will cle-,” Mr. Nobody cut her off with a shushing motion.

“Your reliance on the seer is your first problem. We got along just fine before, while I agree it is helpful, it seems to have clouded the minds of some of the leadership.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“No, Stone, That’s the majority opinion. You see, while you were trying to further incite Mr. Fuller, we had another vote. Care to guess what that was about?” he asked, quirking his eyebrow.

Stone knew; she wasn’t a fool. Any vote she was left out of was a vote about her fate. She tried to leap across the desk and smash the smug man’s face in but she couldn’t overpower the force holding her in her seat.

“I admire your tenacity, Stone, but there must be rules, even for people like us.”

She tried to scream, but an invisible force rammed into her mouth, making her choke. The sensation only lasted for a moment. The magic holding her motionless, twisted her head around with a snap. Her vision faded as tears of pain streamed down her face.

Mr. Nobody sighed. He didn’t like killing. He only did it out of necessity. He let his feet fall from the desk as he rose and walked around. By the time he was at Stone’s corpse, his body and clothing had morphed to match hers exactly. The corpse disappeared into his ring and he walked down the hall to debrief ‘his’ team.

***

Mr. Nobody finished up his debriefing with the remaining members of Stone’s team. She had chosen the same members that had run into Mr. Fuller in Chicago for the job. Which worked out in the Order's favor. Once he finished questioning them one at a time he disposed of each member. It closed a possible security issue while neatly cleaning up the mess Stone had created.

The only thing left was to have a face-to-face with Mr. Fuller. Mr. Nobody was not looking forward to that. It would be much simpler if he could just kill the man and be done with it but that wasn’t how their organization operated. If that were the case their organization would have been rooted out and destroyed a long time ago for being a threat. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill the man if given the go-ahead, but that was for the council to decide.

Mr. Nobody made his way down the hall in his Stone disguise. None of the other cell members knew that Stone or her team were dead yet and it would remain that way for the time being. He waited after activating the communication mirror.

“It’s done, how should we proceed?”

“The Seer recommends termination of the target… I urge caution. Let the voters decide.”

The vote landed on caution. Which was no surprise to Mr. Nobody. He nodded, “I will attempt to make contact with the target.”

After that, the screen went blank. Mr. Nobody would act the part until a replacement for Stone was sent over, then he would try and reach out to Mr. Fuller.