The wall to the bunker groans as it splits open to let light filter in. Ursula twirls a ring that jingles with dozens of keys around one finger as she looks around the empty place, her eyes stopping on random places as if there were things there.
I nod at her empty back and step into the bunker with her. “Don’t you need a bag?”
She shrugs. “I’ve got everything I need, don’t you worry. So, Shelby, what would you rather? Tiny plane or big helicopter?”
“Teleporter. But if that’s not happening, then whichever one’s faster.”
“They’re both equally fast. Pick whichever one you prefer.” Ursula says as she gestures at all the empty space in front of us. “There’s more space in the helicopter, but it’s a slightly bumpier ride. And the plane’s the opposite of that; a lot smoother but pretty much no room to move around.”
“And they’re both the exact same speed? Really?” I ask with mild suspicion. “How’s that possible?”
Ursula catches her keys in her palm and grins. “Magic. Make your choice or I’ll make it myself.”
I think for a second about whether I want space or a smooth ride. It doesn’t sound like a great tradeoff either way, but if I had to choose one, I guess I’d rather the extra space. At least that’ll leave me room to play around with my shellraiser things on the trip down.
“Helicopter.”
“Gotcha.” Ursula grabs one single key and lets the others dangle down on the ring. “One helicopter coming up. You might want to stand back. I don’t remember if I put the rotors down the last time I used it.”
Put the rotors… down? Can you do that with a helicopter? I open my mouth to ask, but the shimmer of something teleporting in shuts me up and gets me to move back. Way back. Outside of the bunker where no helicopter blades can appear inside of my skull. A helicopter painted exactly like Ursula’s car appears with a flash of golden electricity–with its rotors folded in half and pulled in tight to the vehicle.
So apparently the rotors can go down. I’m definitely not sure if that’s standard, but it’s there. Ursula presses something on her keyfob and the back of the helicopter starts lowering to reveal the inside. There’s definitely a good bit of room in there, with seats on either side of the inner compartment facing towards each other and a good chunk of overhead storage. Ursula looks back at me and grins before bowing slightly and motioning at the helicopter.
“Take the back for privacy, or sit up front with me for a better view and a little more comfort.” She says as I walk past her. “It’s going to be a pretty long ride, and there’s food in the overheads if you get hungry. Not good food, but it’s definitely food.”
I glance at the seats, then up at the cockpit. “I’ll take the back. Gives me more space to work with.”
Ursula nods and walks over to one of the overhead compartments as I open one for myself and throw my stuff in. “Seatbelts are on either side of you, and there’s a parachute under your chair if things go horribly wrong. Oh, and you’ll need these.” A pair of ear protecting headphones lands in the seat next to me. “It’s going to get loud as hell, so don’t take them off no matter what happens. There’s a closed-loop communicator in there so we can talk to each other. Press the button on your right ear cup to turn it on.”
“Sounds good.” I say as I set the headphones around my neck and settle into my seat. “Before I start doing anything magical, will that alert the preservation?”
“Nope. The second that hatch back there closes, this chopper is signal-tight. There’s a lot of complicated tech that goes into it, but the short version is that it takes the specific signals your magic gives off and dilutes them until they’re not distinguishable from background signals.” She explains as she drops into the pilot’s seat and pulls on her own ear protection. “Headphones on, seatbelts on. We leave in thirty seconds.”
The sound of flicking switches and the start of whirring rotors accompanies Ursula’s warning. I pull both halves of my seatbelt across my chest and buckle them together, then pull my headphones onto my ears. The sound and motion slowly work their way through my body, stirring something deep inside of me that doesn’t particularly like being stirred. Pretty sure I’m not prone to motion sickness, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
Magic surges through the helicopter as the back hatch hisses shut, overtaking the entire thing as the door to the bunker rumbles closed, plunging us into utter darkness. I pull out my Class Card for a little light, but what it puts out is instantly eclipsed by the brightness of daylight. We must’ve teleported somewhere, since all I see is a stretch of deep blue sea when I look out through the front window. But if we can teleport…
I bring my fingers up to the ‘talk’ button. “Why aren’t we just teleporting to the rig?”
Ursula reaches up to tap her own headset as her voice crackles to life. “We’ve got a bunch of bunkers and platforms all over the world. Teleporting to them is easy, whereas what we did with the car a few weeks ago was unbelievably expensive. Noland footed the bill for that one, but it’d be damn hard to convince him to spend that much on something we could spend a few extra hours on.”
Makes sense to me. I wouldn’t want to spend any Worth–which is almost impossible to get on Earth–on something I could spend time on instead.
“Makes sense to me. Turning off talk mode.”
“Just say ‘over’.” Ursula chuckles. “It gets the message through loud and clear. Over.”
I nod to myself and tap the button on the side of my headphones. The helicopter vibrates fiercely and starts to lift off the ground, and Ursula stiffens as she goes into concentration mode. Just like when she freaked out over gambling, she gets way too into almost anything she does. Which is great for things like this, where super concentration and overthinking things will keep us alive, but makes it kind of hard to play board games with her.
Not that March doesn’t love trying. But there’s a reason she prefers to play with Noland–or even me, if he’s not available.
“Hey, Pearl, we’re good.” I type into my screen and wait a second for her to read it. “Did you manage to dig anything up from those files I got?”
She raises an eyebrow and tilts her head. “In the half hour it took you two to get ready? No, Shelby, I didn’t find anything new in the blueprints in a few hours that I couldn't find in days. Not for a lack of trying, that’s for sure.”
“No, not the files. The ones March gave me as we were leaving.” I specify. “The ones on the preservation. You know… the ones I can’t read?”
“Oh, those! Um, no, not yet. I don’t really recognize a lot of the history or human-specific terms here, so I have to use a lot more context clues than I’m used to.” She pauses, then looks down as if the files were physically in front of her. “But there’s a lot of interesting stuff here. Definitely more than the first page. Because I definitely wasn’t looking at the blueprints again instead of the files.”
I chuckle and roll my eyes. “There’s no time limit, so do whatever you want. But if you think you’ve hit a wall with the blueprints, maybe March’s files could shed some new light on things?”
“...Maybe.” Pearl admits reluctantly. “But I’m so close to getting the theory behind the ????? down. We don’t have the materials to build it, sure, but I bet I could repurpose some of it to give you an edge.”
“You do you. Oh, and if you want to watch, I’m going to try out my new spell effects on the devices. Since there’s a chance we’ll finally see some combat again.”
Pearl nods excitedly and makes a motion like pushing something across a table. “You don’t have to justify it to me; I would’ve been happy if you wasted Worth a few weeks ago. So, which one are you going to try first? The knife or the matrix?”
I summon the shellbound knife to answer Pearl’s question. She squeals and leans in closer as if to take a better look, but backs away with a pout when she obviously doesn’t get any closer. I flick my right arm to summon a single Worth into my right palm, split it into two ghost quarters, and send one of them back into my coin holster. I’ll definitely need it later, but for now, it’d just get in the way.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
One quick flip and I’ve got a ghost quarter ready for spellcasting. I let my awareness drip down into it, carrying the intent of making the best coinbound projectile I can for the knife, and slide it into the coin slot as I feel it taking hold. For a second, nothing happens. Which is a good sign, since it would’ve spat itself out if it still didn’t work. After a few more seconds of waiting with bated breath, during which Pearl can’t stop making anticipatory noises, a screen inserts itself on my vision to inform me that it worked.
The knife itself, however, barely looks like it changed. There’s only a thin line of Pearl-coloured magic running through the spine, fraying off in thin lines that branch towards the bladed edge. I press it to my arm to keep it in place and divert my attention to the explanation.
Shellbound Knife: Coinbound Projectile activation.
When activated with Coinbound Projectile, the weapon gains the ability to inject volatile magic from inside of the blade to anything it has cut. This magic can be triggered again to take on another shape.
The greater the Worth used for the spell, the greater the amount of magic this weapon has to work with.
So like putting a projectile inside of something by cutting it. I can see a lot of ways that could be useful, and not just for fighting. Scour a thin line on a piece of wood, and use the projectile detonation to cut it clean through. Make a little cut on a tree to mark a path, then activate it later to dispose of the evidence. …Well, maybe that’d give more away than I’d like, but my point still stands. Not just a combat spell.
“Interesting. You could do a lot of damage with that.” Pearl notes with rapt attention. “If you cut someone’s arm, you could wait until they went in for another attack and completely take them by surprise. Or leave traps in the floors and walls when you’re running from something like the corpsedragger.”
I set my mouth into a thin line and nod in agreement. Just because it had non-combat applications, I can’t escape the fact that this seems almost tailor-made for killing people. Just like Projectile itself, I guess. A focused thought purges the magic from my knife, and I send it away to make room to wield the matrix. I push shield into the other ghost quarter with a similar intent to the last one, then press it into the indent.
Shellbound Matrix: Coinbound Shield activation.
When activated with Coinbound Shield, the matrix monitors the wearer’s vital signs and will assist with any vital biological processes without healing any damage done.
The greater the Worth used for the spell, the greater the amount of magic this matrix has to work with.
Okay, I guess that’s why it doesn’t look like it’s doing anything. I don’t fully get what it means by assisting with biological processes, but maybe it’s something like replacing one of my lungs if I puncture it? Or… filtering my blood if someone casts a spell of ‘destroy kidneys’ on me. Neither of those sound like desirable situations to be in, and if the matrix won’t actually heal any damage done… shit, I need to get a lot more health potions.
Pearl doesn’t really have anything to say, either. She reads the text, and I know she did, but she doesn’t say anything at all. A slightly disturbed and worried look crosses her face, and I’ve got a feeling she’s imagining what uses this spell could have. Hopefully I won’t ever have to use this one, but I know better than to delude myself. My poor right arm is living proof.
With a sigh and a shake of my head I purge the magic from the matrix. Then I split one more Worth into ghost quarters and fill one of them with relocation. I’ve got a feeling I need more Soul to be able to use this one, but there’s always a chance this is a low requirement spell. I press it into the middle of the matrix, wait a few seconds, then reach out and pluck it from the center before it can be spat across the helicopter.
No dice. The system doesn’t give me a popup right away, since I’m guessing it didn’t fully register the spell, but my awareness somehow knew the spell wasn’t taking. I swipe over to my spells tab and scroll down to relocation, which now has two more requirements under it that weren’t there before.
Shellbound Knife: 13 Soul.
Shellbound Matrix: 28 Soul.
One a few points away, and the other almost triple what I’ve currently got. I have to assume that a higher Soul requirement means a stronger effect, but from what I’ve seen my projectiles and shields do, that doesn’t always seem to be true. Maybe I could tunnel vision Soul from now on and just keep bumping up the power of my shellraiser stuff, but that would mean I put all my other stats on the backburner. And that’s just not financially sound with how the system works.
I lean back and send all the extras away. There’s a lot of hours ahead of us, and I’ve got a whole lot of thinking to do.
----------------------------------------
“Gettin’ close. If we don’t get her message within five minutes, we’re turning around and going home. Got that, Gambler?”
Ursula’s voice cuts through the loud whir rotors straight into my ears. She looks at me out of the corner of my eye for my response. I give her a thumbs-up as I put my Class Card into my pocket and turn my attention to the front window. Still looks like an endless ocean to me, but who’s to say the rig isn’t invisible?
My awareness flares, and I stretch my arm to catch something that’s screaming away from the cockpit. It smacks into my palm like a brick with a crack just loud enough to pierce the roar of the helicopter. I hiss in discomfort and pull the tablet back, then tap on it a few times to make sure it’s on.
“Good! Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into something horrible.” She says chipperly and presses a button on the side of her flight stick. The burst of speed jostles me to the right, and it’s a struggle to hold her tablet away from my chest. “Fifteen minutes from the target, and thirty seconds to the communication radius. …Ten. Five. Aaand… we’re in. Keep yourself sharp, over.”
“Keep yourself sharp. What does that even mean?” I chuckle to myself and stiffen my elbows to keep the tablet at arms’ length. “Hope this isn’t some overcomplicated trap. I don’t think I could take another ten-hour helicopter ride without at least a day or two to recover. Over.”
A laugh rips itself out of Ursula’s throat, but before she can say anything else, her tablet starts to beep. She sits up straighter than before, then taps a button on her headphones that mine doesn’t have. A tiny blue light blinks on in the upper right corner of the tablet, informing me that a pair of headphones has just linked itself to the tablet. I take a deep breath, put on my best negotiator’s smile, and swipe to accept the incoming call.
A strange black-ish light joins Ursula’s blue. Then a tiny video camera icon. Staticky noise fills my ears for a few seconds as a grey screen slowly bleeds away into… nothing. The video feed clicks off, and the static transforms into the sound of a frustrated woman’s voice.
“Of course the video isn’t working. Why would it be working? It’s not like I pay… oh, the voice is working? It’s something, I guess.” She sighs, then clears her throat. “Can you hear me? Is the line clear?”
“Yes, and yes.” I say confidently. “We can hear you loud and clear. So, what are we looking for?”
“Straight to the point. I like that. But first; introductions. I’m the woman that’s hiring you. You’ll find specifics on the oil rig if you want to know more about me, but that’s all I’m comfortable saying over wireless. Who are you?”
I glance over at Ursula, and somehow, she’s already giving me the thumbs-up. “You’ve got Mercenary and Gambler. If you don’t know what that means, you haven’t done enough research.”
The woman takes a breath, then yells at someone to ‘find out what that means’. So she isn’t perfectly well connected, yet she somehow has the ability to store coins on an abandoned oil rig. That’s worrying.
“I’ll know who you are before we meet.” She says confidently. “You’re looking for two coins; defender and psychic. One of them is for a close friend of mine, and I’ll be taking the other. Will the two of you be escorting me to the event, or is that someone else’s specialty?”
“Woah, whoa. Two coins? Your request said you were looking for one. How many do you have squirreled away on this thing?”
“More than you’ve ever seen in one place, but not more than you can imagine.” She says cryptically. “There’s directions and instructions along with the specifics I just mentioned in an obvious raised building on the rig. I’ll up your pay for each coin you bring back beyond defender and psychic, but you have to bring those two back.”
I nod to myself as Ursula snaps her fingers to get my attention. She makes a motion like unbuckling my seatbelt, then gestures for me to join her up front. There’s no reason not to do exactly that, so I brace myself as best as I can and push myself out of my chair.
“We’ll do everything we can. But apocalypse-touched things aren’t exactly predictable.” I half-grunt as I make my way to the cockpit, then collapse into the co-pilot’s seat. “Either we’re coming out of there with every single coin you’ve got in that vault of yours, or we’re leaving empty handed.”
“No, no, you are not leaving empty-handed.” The woman states forcefully. “You are bringing me those coins. I will not lose this chance because you deemed it too dangerous.”
“I never said it was too dangerous. I said it’s all or nothing; either the oil rig turns before we can find the coins, or it turns after. If you wanted it to end any other way, you shouldn’t have waited until there were only single-digit days left in this thing’s lifespan.”
I tilt my head at Ursula, who vigorously points at a little speck off in the distance. Narrowing my eyes does next to nothing to bring it into focus, but I don’t need to see the thing to know what it is.
The woman swallows hard. “Either you bring me those coins or you hope to god that you die when the rig turns.”
“Aw, love you too.” I say sarcastically. “Oh, just a quick little reminder; we’re the ones who’re going to protect you at that event. You might not want to piss us off.”
“You–” The woman starts, but I swipe off the call before she can say anything and hand the tablet back to Ursula. She raises an eyebrow at me, but nods in appreciation.
“Handled that damn well for your first asshole client. Even if the woman sounded like she was going through a whole lot behind the scenes.”
I lean against the window and sigh. “Nobody does something like this without at least a little desperation. Why else would she wait until now?”
“Maybe she’s a dumbass. Or maybe the platform waking up is how we access those coins.” Ursula says with a shrug. “Either way, we’re going to find out in a few short minutes. Buckle up and get ready for magical interference.”