The refinery was alive with the ruckus of machinery. Evan twiddled his pencil in between his fingers, casting glances out the operator room window to make sure nobody was coming. He knew doing homework during work hours was frowned upon, but he wanted to have time to work on his hoverboard when he got home.
The circuitry of the power module was driving him crazy. He would almost have to break the laws of physics to get enough thrust to hover, let alone get propulsion for forward momentum. It was far too late to redesign it to a lighter version; This one had been in the works for months.
He shook his head and brought his attention back to his homework assignment. He sighed. World History was the most boring class. Once he learned the history of one country, he knew the history of all countries. Each one had their own form of government that would last for a couple hundred years, or a couple millennia if they were lucky. Eventually the people would realize how broken the system was, which led to revolution, downfall, and the rise of something new that would inevitably repeat the same process. All this happened while warring with other countries over land, religion, or politics. Evan was left wondering whether the history would eventually come up with something interesting or original to talk about.
A blaring alarm sounded from inside the machine room. Evan startled in his seat. Red lights flashed on the control panel. He dropped his pencil. The alert on the screen read, “Critical Failure – Emergency Stop”.
He stood out of the chair, staring at the screen. He was the only one here; It was after normal work hours. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t see much beyond the dirty operator room windows. He tapped the screen a few times to see where the machine had failed. One of the main conveyor belts was jammed because of a motor failure. Curiously, he wasn’t able to see any of the specific details of the motor. It was dead.
Evan squinted at the screen, confused. It was a brand-new machine just installed a couple months ago. It should have lasted several years before showing signs of age. He called up his manager on his wrist pad.
The call was answered immediately and an elderly male voice spoke. “Hey kid, you know you’re not supposed to be calling me at a time like this.”
Evan scrunched his face in shame. “Yeah, sorry, but something happened with the sorting machine. One of the conveyor belts broke.”
“Did you try to restart it?”
“No, it was a critical failure. You said not to try anything if that happened.”
“Dammit,” the guy moaned. “Well, do what you can to investigate what happened and write up a report so the guys can take care of it tomorrow.”
“Yes sir,” Evan said.
“And for future reference, you don’t have to call me if something like this happens. Just report on what happened.”
“Yes sir. Sorry, sir.”
“Good night.” He hung up before Evan could reply.
Evan let his arm dangle by his side. Something wasn’t right. He brought up the security panel on the screen and scrolled through all the camera feeds until he found one that included the broken motor. There was a faint red glow coming from the other side of the conveyor belt. He switched to a better view. What he saw made him do a double-take.
An Aether crystal was protruding from the side of the motor. Its light was fainter than most of the other crystals in the sorting bin. Evan’s hands grew sweaty. Someone was here. They had to be.
He rolled back the footage a few minutes to see what had happened. Everything was running fine for a while. This particular belt carried bigger crystals and dumped them into a container where they were going to be processed and refined further. Then, one of them levitated off the belt, wandered off to the side, spun a few times, and slammed deep into the motor. A red pulse shot out the other end of the motor, then it jammed. The glow of the crystal diminished to what he had seen originally.
He slumped back into the office chair, shocked. Ghosts didn’t exist. At least, they weren’t supposed to. He put on the security headset and replayed the clip. There was the noise from the machinery, but when the crystal jammed itself into the motor, it made no noise.
“What the…?” Evan threw the headset onto the desk and paced around the tiny room. He put his hands on his head to get them to stop shaking. His thoughts raced as he went through his options. Escape, escape, and escape. Screw the report, the video was all the others needed.
The only problem was that the only way in and out of the machinery room was through an exit just past the broken-down motor. He took a deep, long breath, telling himself to suck it up and get to business. That’s what his father would probably say, anyway. Maybe he should call him and tell him what was happening. No, he was teaching at the college. Also, the place was completely quiet now. He didn’t want to give away his location to whoever, or whatever, was here to cause trouble.
Evan shoved his schoolwork into his backpack, then slung his backpack over his shoulder. He picked up a long wrench from the toolbox in the corner. His clammy hands were slippery on the cold metal. He wished he had an Aether crystal with him. He wasn’t practiced in Aether bending, but it would be much more useful than ordinary matter.
Holding the wrench tightly with both hands, he crept out of the operator room. His footsteps echoed throughout the machine room. His head pulsed with each heartbeat. He cast quick glances everywhere as he continued on. He needed to round the corner, then at the far end of the room was the exit. And the sabotaged motor.
He paused as he peeked around the corner, holding the wrench close to his chest. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself swinging at a foe, and the sequence repeated itself several times. His body was ready to jump into action at any moment.
His eyes locked on the crystal protruding from the motor. He clenched his jaw as he rounded the corner and held the wrench out in front of him. At least the lights hadn’t gone out. He would’ve gone into full panic mode. He drew closer to the crystal with each step. From what he could see, it was an ordinary crystal that had some of its power drained already.
Then, Evan noticed something odd about the wall that had the exit door. It was blurred slightly. He glanced behind him. Everything else looked normal and clear. He blinked and squinted at the exit again, but the blur was still there. It was almost like he was looking at it through a window.
He took another step, and the exit got blurrier. After another step, there was a subtle tingling sensation in his body and a man simply materialized in front of him. Then nothing was blurred anymore. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with neat black hair, a nice coat, gloves, and jeans. He was holding a crystal in front of his face, inspecting it. No, admiring it.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Evan almost thought the man was hypnotized by it until the man spoke. His voice was sleek and cool. “Welcome to illusion magic.”
“Who are you?” Evan asked, his knuckles getting white as he gripped the wrench harder. He motioned to the broken motor with his eyes. “D-Did you do this?”
The man grinned as if Evan had told a joke and looked at him incredulously. “Who else, doofus?”
Evan gulped. He didn’t look like anyone he knew. Looking into the man’s eyes sent a shiver down his spine. He couldn’t be trusted. Evan eyed the exit. The man caught on and gestured behind himself. “Oh, is that your way out, and I’m in the middle? How inconvenient.”
He tucked the crystal into an inner pocket of his coat, which Evan could see bulged with many other crystals. He glared at the man. “You’re stealing!”
The man feigned surprise as he glanced at his coat and patted it to see if it had anything in its pockets. He shrugged. “I guess I am! Not so much of a doofus now, are you?”
“Put those back!” Evan yelled, taking a step forward.
“Or what,” the man giggled. “You gonna whack me with a wrench?”
Evan glanced at the wrench, feeling helpless. He tried to maintain a sense of dignity as he announced his retort. “They don’t belong to you.”
The man laughed again, lowering his head for a bit. He put both index fingers together to mimic counting. “Okay, first of all… no, you have plenty. You can share. And second of all… actually, yeah. They kinda do.”
Evan looked at him curiously. “How?”
The man frowned and turned to the bin holding hundreds of crystals. Their red glow illuminated his face. “Oh, you’re just a kid. You’d never understand.”
Evan raised an eyebrow. What was that supposed to mean? His gaze wandered to the crystal lodged in the motor. His eyes narrowed. “Wait… if you were trying to steal some crystals, why would you break the machine? Are you trying to get caught?”
As Evan was talking, the man had closed his eyes and was nodding. “There we go. That’s the insightfulness I was expecting from the son of a genius.” He beamed at Evan and gestured to him with a hand. “I declare you not a doofus anymore!”
“Or maybe you’re the doofus.”
The man frowned in contemplation. “I could be. Maybe. That’s the thing, would a doofus know that he’s a doofus, or would he be so much of a doofus that he would be ignorant of his own doofus-ness?” He looked at Evan as if expecting him to reply.
Evan blinked and shook his head, confused. “Why are you here?”
The man’s fist clenched as he shouted at the top of his lunges. “Because I’m the doofus with a higher purpose than mining Aether crystals like they’re some cheap mineral to be used and then discarded!”
Evan’s voice quivered as he uttered his reply. “And what is this higher purpose?”
The man’s gaze pierced Evan’s, his eyes cold and calculating. He started in Evan’s direction, making Evan back up at the same pace. The man’s voice was cold as ice. “Your father has acquired something of mine I have been working on for far longer than you’ve been born. I want you to tell him—”
“I won’t take orders from you!” Evan shouted, raising the wrench above his head. “Get away from me!”
He brought the wrench down with all his might, but just when it was about to make contact with the man’s head, the man blinked out of existence. Evan lost his balance from the whiffed strike and stumbled forward, stupefied.
The man’s voice spoke directly behind him. “I see, very brave.”
Evan whirled around to strike again, but the man caught his wrist in an iron grip. The other hand held an Aether crystal. He thrusted it forward. Intense pain seared Evan’s lower abdomen. Red light flashed everywhere. The man quickly withdrew a thin red blade made of pure Aether from Evan’s body. The crystal acted as a handle for the blade.
Evan’s legs crumpled under him and he collapsed to the floor. His chest tightened under the immensity of the pain. He wanted to scream, but for some reason nothing came out. All he could think of was calling his dad. He had to.
He fumbled with his wrist pad as his breaths grew quick and shallow. Above him, the man spoke. “That’s right, call daddy. He’ll be thrilled to see what his actions have brought.”
In the corner of Evan’s vision, the man disappeared. Evan’s hand was soaked with blood as he tried to cover the small hole in his belly. With each ringtone, Evan mentally screamed at his dad to pick up. On the third ring, Brandon picked up. “Hey, bud. What’s going on? You know I’m still teaching class, right?”
Evan used all of his willpower to get his voice to work in between panicked breaths. His voice was weak. “Dad… I’m gonna die…”
***
Brandon shouted at his wrist pad as he ran to his car in the parking lot. “Get to the Ridgemire refinery, now! My son has been attacked. I am on my way, but don’t wait for me.”
His car unlocked automatically as he approached. He dove into the driver’s seat and angrily fumbled with the seatbelt connection. The engine roared and the tires screeched as he backed it out of the parking spot, nearly colliding with a car parked on the other side.
Back on the main avenue, he swerved between the cars. Many of them blared their horns at him as he cut them off to get ahead. He didn’t care if he got a speeding ticket. All that mattered was that he got to his son in time.
Eventually, he had a pair of cop cars tailing him. They tried to disable his engine several times, but he had secretly modified it to be immune to those signals.
As he approached the last major intersection before the refinery, he saw that all lanes were occupied as the cars were stopped at the red light. He swerved to the rightmost lane and almost onto the sidewalk, frightening a couple waiting to take the crosswalk. His car scraped the other car, snapping off his side mirror.
The intersection was busy with two-way traffic. He avoided collision in the first band of traffic, but barely had time to blink before a truck slammed into the passenger side. The airbag slapped Brandon’s face as the car was sent into a spinning tumble down the road. It bounced off the median before coming to rest on all four wheels.
Brandon scrambled to find the door handle as the airbag was still in his face. Once he pulled the handle, he kicked the door open and moaned in pain. A sharp pain radiated from the middle of his shin. He pushed through the pain and hobbled out of the smoking car. The entire front right side of the car was crunched in. The truck, a couple hundred feet behind him, was in a similar condition. The police cars were making their way around the truck.
He glanced down at the other end of the road, dazed. A quarter-mile away was the entrance to the refinery, and he could see the medical trucks parked there with lights flashing. He took a step in that direction and tears filled his eyes. The pain in his leg was too much, there was no way he would make it there before the police got to him.
Brandon collapsed onto the pavement, defeated. He tried to clear his eyes to see what the paramedics were doing, but they refilled too quick to see clearly. He tried to remember what his last interaction with Evan had been, and trembled at the thought that it would truly be his last interaction with his son.
The police pulled up behind him and got out of their cars. Brandon could hear the cuffs clinging behind him. He preemptively put his wrists together behind his back. At least he had half a brain to not fight what was going to happen next.
One of the officers spoke. “Brandon, what happened, man? You’re the last person I’d expect to do something like this.”
Shame panged in Brandon’s chest. This is not what he wanted any of his friends to see. He turned his head back, tears beginning to trickle down his face. “Someone stabbed him, Hector. Someone stabbed Evan.”
“Shit,” Hector said as he stood next to Brandon and stared at the ambulance in the distance. His anger seemed to evaporate in an instant, replaced by worry. The other officer secured Brandon in the cuffs and tried to get him to stand up. Brandon winced in pain and glanced down at his leg. His pants were soaked dark red. Hector winced as well. “Damn, you’re gonna need that fixed before we do anything else. We’ll take you to the same hospital as Evan.”
Brandon nodded as Hector took his arm to bear some of his weight. “Just tell me straight, what will happen to me after the hospital?”
Hector pursed his lips and sighed. “I’d say you just earned yourself at least three weeks in jail. Probably paying for that dude’s truck too. And your insurance will slap you across the face.”
“Great,” Brandon sighed, “just great. Just what I needed.”
Hector helped Brandon into the back seat and leaned on the open door. “You know, all this extra shit could’ve been avoided if—”
“I get it. Lesson learned!” Brandon snapped as he laid down on his side. “Just take me to the damn hospital.”
Neither of them said a word the entire ride.