“Shit!”

Brandon shook his hand vigorously. He hated soldering. He always forgot what was still hot and what had cooled off.

He rubbed his eyes and looked at the time. He really wanted to sleep, but the project was due tomorrow. If he wanted to have the best shot at success after graduation, he had to put in the long hours now.

His parents were struggling to pay rent, so he figured he could fiddle with the modular heating units and make them more efficient. He was grateful his engineering professor had let him count this as his final project. It would void the warranty of the heating unit, which would cost thousands of shards to replace, but he didn’t care. All his parents would know was that they wouldn’t have to replace the heating unit’s crystal as often.

He plopped back down on the office chair without armrests, giving an exhausted sigh. “This better fucking work.”

He slapped some keys on his laptop, then pressed enter to initiate the heater’s startup sequence. The result of that last keystroke would go on to change his life, and the world, in ways he couldn’t have imagined.

A horizontal torrent of red Aether shot out of the crystal housed in the heating unit. Brandon squealed, shooting out of his chair and across the garage before he realized what happened. He slapped a hand over his mouth. Did that sound just come out of his mouth?

Then the secondary shock came: Did he just break the heating unit?

Footsteps rumbled from the ceiling above his head. He looked frantically at the unit on the table. What could he do? Where could he hide before his father saw what he did?

He stood paralyzed by indecision until the garage door opened and his father’s tired voice wafted through. “Whuzz goin’ on here? Brandon?”

Brandon jumped between his father and the unit, waving his hands in a placating gesture. “Uh, nothing! Everything’s fine dad. I just burned myself.”

“Iss pass midnight, Brandon!” The man in the doorway squinted past Brandon. “Wha’re you doin’ with the heater? Why is there a hole in the wall?”

Brandon whirled around. Horror struck when he saw the smoldering hole in the garage wall. “Uh, da—uh. No no no, dad. It’s not what you think! I’ll fix it.”

“You sure will,” his father said, stabbing a finger at the heating unit. “You’re paying for that and the wall!” He closed the door and stormed away.

Brandon nearly pulled his hair out as he crept back to his laptop, which had clattered onto the floor when he jumped up. He looked at the screen. The program was running but reported no response from the unit. He got up and looked at the power module circuit board. There was a wisp of smoke rising from one of the components. The diode to manage the current coming from the tip of the crystal was fried. But why? It looked like none of the other components had burnt. How was he supposed to finish the project by tomorrow afternoon?

To take his mind off the problem, he focused on the bigger problem. He peered through the hole in the wall. Fortunately, their apartment was at the corner of the building. Their neighbors wouldn’t be complaining today.

The blinding red Aetheric jet had only lasted for a fraction of a second, but it had been powerful enough to burn through the plastic casing and the garage wall. The only time it output that much energy was when an Aether mage used Aetherite. Technology was only capable of drawing a feeble electric current, with an enormous amount of excess heat. It couldn’t mimic biological interactions with Aetherite.

Could it?

Brandon looked at the circuit board, then at the hole in the wall, then back again. The ran the numbers in his mind. How much current could that diode handle? Surely the others were unaffected. He checked. The other six were unaffected, but they were soldered in the wrong direction. He slapped his forehead. He had inadvertently set up the circuitry to feed current into the crystal instead of from it.

He scratched his head for several minutes alternating between dread of what grade he’d get on the project, and wonder at what he’d discovered. As far as he knew, nobody else had published anything on the subject of technology-induced Aetheric effects. Surely, someone else would have discovered this by now. Humans had already invented cars and planes.

Then suddenly it clicked. No, it was highly improbable they would have discovered what he himself just did. Nobody else working on this kind of circuit would make that kind of rookie mistake: Soldering on diodes backwards six times in a row. Only he, Brandon Styler Norallis, a desperate, severely sleep-deprived college student living in his parents’ apartment, could screw up in such a unique and innovative way. It was what made him special.

With renewed vigor, he wrote down his initial notes in a text document on his laptop. He had apparently created a feedback loop between the crystal and the circuit board, and that somehow triggered the release of raw Aetheric energy. He wondered then, what would happen if he changed the resistor values, or the extraction frequency?

He created a data spreadsheet, and spend the next several hours testing and experimenting with his newfound power of exploding electronics with magic. After a dozen soldering iron burn marks, fifty-three fried diodes, and one extra hole in the wall, he had a new and improved college thesis. He plotted the data points and started noticing patterns. By the time he heard the dishes and utensils clattering during his parents’ breakfast, he had derived the skeletons of what would eventually become known as the Densification Equations.

He delivered his thesis to the professor with three minutes until the deadline, then collapsed due to exhaustion and dehydration. He woke up in a hospital bed. After enduring stern lectures from both his parents on discipline and responsibility, Eleanor walked in the room and asked if she could have a word with him. His parents agreed, but wouldn’t leave the room.

With a gentle smile, she explained to Brandon that his professor was thoroughly impressed by his work and had forwarded his thesis to the Ridgemire National Laboratory. They were in the process of reviewing his work, and it was likely that they would offer him a position.

His parents reacted with a mixture of joy and resentment, as she had just validated what they had just condemned. Nevertheless, Brandon promised he would be more careful in the future.

A week later, he received a job offer from the Ridgemire National Laboratory, at which point he realized he’d forgotten to submit a formal application, but it didn’t matter. They welcomed him with open arms, and he was immediately assigned to work with Rich Onver, one of the lead scientists.

Over the next few months, they went through thousands of Aether crystals, documenting and refining their knowledge. They discovered that multiple crystals could be arranged to work in tandem, which could create car engines an order of magnitude more efficient than those currently in use.

They licensed their patent, and became instant millionaires as automobile companies integrated the new technology. The price of air travel dropped sevenfold. Someone even miniaturized the engine design and started the world’s first hoverboard company, though they had to fight several uphill legal battles when people started crashing and dying. The invention of Aetherically-powered armor was their saving grace.

Brandon would never forget the day when he took the world’s first Aetherically-powered car and proposed to Marvain in it. His life had become a surreal whirlwind, all from the explosive burnout of a broken heating unit.

Then the dark side of his discovery was unveiled. Someone figured out how to maximize the thrust from the Aetheric output. Aetheric pistols and shields were created. Then military scientists discovered that a crystal hit with enough blunt force would release all its energy instantaneously.

He could also never forget the day the news reporter triumphantly declared that the Trellendekian army had been decimated with the use of a single Aetheric bomb, which was orders of magnitude more destructive than the most powerful chemical bomb. He had dropped to his knees in the Laboratory meeting room where they were showing the report. Rich and others had tried their best to comfort him, telling him that it wasn’t his fault what others did with his discoveries.

But reason wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the wall of guilt he had erected around himself. Why hadn’t he foreseen this possibility? He should have been more cautious in releasing his innovations to the world. He should have asked himself if the world was ready for this new technology. He should have listened to his parents when they told him to be careful. Hadn’t he promised?

The reports of Eredoran victories flashed in his mind, each death count branding itself in memory made of stone, never to be forgotten. He shouted for it to stop. He said he was sorry for his work. He wanted to leave his mark on the world, but not in blood!

He lashed out at the torrent of images, and they lashed back. He stood in a wasteland, gazing at the sky. Aether bolts streaked toward him from all directions like a maw of a thousand red, pointy, deadly teeth. An invisible force held him in place as the maw closed in on him.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

He screamed, and there was nothing.

He was awake, he knew that, but all his senses were dulled by a heavy veil slowly lifting. First came the heavy feeling in his head, then he realized his head was bent toward his chest. Then his body started tingling with the sensation of sitting in a hard chair. Spots appeared in front of him. After a few minutes, they resolved into a dimly lit floor. His arms were locked to the armrests. His legs were free. He was drenched in sweat.

He tried moving, and a muscle in his arm twitched. He tried talking, but his tongue felt too thick. Moving his eyes worked.

He was in a small room with no windows and a single light embedded in the ceiling above him. He swung his head from side to side, though it was still too heavy to lift off his chest. Two hemispheres were attached to the walls at head-height. What were they for? What were they doing to him?

Then he realized there was an immense pressure on his forehead.

“Lemme out,” he croaked with a voice that barely worked. He put more effort into forming the words. “Let me out.”

Nothing happened. Nobody answered.

He managed enough strength to lift his head up. He gritted his teeth as he yanked against his restraints. “Let me out!”

All he got back was his own voice rebounding in the tiny room. He tried to break his restraints, then roared in frustration when he gave up.

The response sent chill racing throughout his body. A subtle, slow clicking noise reverberated throughout the walls and the chair welded to the floor. What kind of device made that noise? Brandon racked his foggy brain for an answer, but none was found. Only one thing was for certain.

Nothing outside this room was friendly.

***

Kyreeda fired a bolt at the human-shaped target projection that suddenly appeared behind her. A headshot. The projection disappeared back into the darkness. She recentered her balance and continued on through the maze.

The corners were faint outlines in the near-absolute darkness. It was difficult to tell the distance without her armor visor’s metrics, but that was the point of the exercise. Make everything difficult now, so reality was easier. That was the theory, at least.

Nothing could have prepared her for the spontaneous promotion. Yes, she had yearned to ultimately take the reigns as Lead Operator, but only when Crainen got his share of the profits and retired. She could have used his experience and expertise. Now all she had to go by was memory and his past mission reviews.

A target flashed into being ahead of her. She ducked below the surprise bolt just in time, firing a shot through its chest. The heat from the bolt scorched the top of her head, and she suddenly remembered that she had to buzz her hair off again. She would not start another fire in a closed off underground training facility. Once was enough. Hair was just another obstruction anyway.

She rounded the corner, fists at the ready, the crystals embedded in her gloves gleaming from recent use. She remained committed to not creating Aetheric shields. It consumed valuable energy, especially for a training exercise, and it got her to move more physically. There wasn’t enough time during lunch breaks to follow up Aetheric training with cardio. She did what she could.

Motion flickered to her right. A faint humanoid projection stood at the end of the hallway, ghostly like an afterimage. She fired one shot. It skimmed the head on the left side, and the illusion faded. She scowled. That would show up on her final score.

Kyreeda went to the end of the hallway and paused before rounding the corner. That wouldn’t contribute to the score, but it was a good habit to have in non-emergency situations. Make sure to keep one’s footsteps light, and always listen before looking. These drills always required participants not use audio illusions, to simulate low Aetheric charge circumstances.

In that moment of stillness, there was a heaviness in her chest. She hopped out from behind the corner, both fists poised to fire. After a half-dozen steps, a figure appeared beside her, poised to strike a downward blow. She sidestepped to imitate a dodge, at the same time manifesting a blade to slice the neck of the projection. That reaction time should make up for her earlier blunder.

She was annoyed to sense the heaviness in her chest lingering. She tried to refocus on her training, but it took more effort. Why was she so upset? Everyone would die eventually. She’d killed dozens and felt less. Why the change?

The next target appeared, and she could have sworn it had Crainen’s face, even though all the projections were faceless. In the split second it took her to raise her arm, she saw those twinkling brown eyes under that silver hair, always planning, always scheming. That subtle smirk was iconic. Even she had felt intimidated by it. She already missed that feeling.

To make it worse, when her bolt impacted the target’s chest, the imaginary expression turned to surprise. She looked away, but it was too late. The afterimage lingered in her mind.

Was that his expression the moment before his death during the shingagi retrieval? It had been hers when he’d learnt of his death, but for only a moment. Nobody saw it, thankfully. And she dared not shed a tear. Such signs of weakness increased the chances of betrayal, and she was determined to be the first Lead Operator to keep everyone else firmly in their place. She knew her time at the top was limited, but it wouldn’t be interrupted if she could help it.

In the end, it was Crainen’s arrogance that got him killed. Riding on the high of acquiring Brandon Norallis after helping the Phantom Scythe strike Eredore, he’d gone for a “walk on the beach”, as he called it. There had been anomalous readings from a number of sensors secretly embedded in the traffic lights near Riana Beach. Nobody could have guessed they would encounter a mythological creature washed up in the shallow waters surrounded by Aetherite.

He assumed the creature was dead, even though he’d never seen one before. It blasted him when his curiosity took him too close. Kyreeda would have loved to know if he had thought the thing was an illusion. They knew now that it most certainly wasn’t, and it was the quick thinking of the agents he took along with him that made the mission worth it.

It was fortunate they carried tranquilizer darts everywhere they went, just in case they weren’t cloaked and someone saw them. It was doubly fortunate that they had an effect on the creature. They got it sedated enough to call in a transport to pick it up, and as far as she knew, civilians hadn’t noticed a thing that night. Its biology seemed to work similar enough to human biology. If it wasn’t, then it might have been found by someone else on the beach, and the public would have struggled to make it known to the world.

That wouldn’t have worked, because the Eredoran media corporations would have been ordered to omit the story, or at least frame it as a hoax in a thirty-second news segment. So long as the common shard maintained its value, media agencies could be kept on a short leash.

The Crimson Vein had its tentacles involved in nearly every aspect of modern life. It cast devious reflections from the shadows, misdirected the curious, and terrified the gullible. Forged over thousands of years, it knew how to play the games of the world, because it wrote the rules. Several times, world events threatened its collapse, but then just at the right time, they recovered. Just the right person would show up to help them, and just the right people would disappear at just the right time. Then the world would look away just long enough to slip back into the shadows.

It was that consistent pattern that gave Kyreeda confidence. Someone out there was helping them, someone of incredible skill and intelligence. She had asked herself countless times why they never showed themselves directly. They never sent messages from the same email address twice, and they didn’t even have a wristpad number. How were they supposed to work together with such dubious communication?

But he must have a reason, she reminded herself. Maybe it was a family line of special individuals that passed this skill onto their offspring. The Vein’s records show this pattern repeating itself over the past millennium. The only thing that bothered her was that she couldn’t fathom how he did it. They had the world’s most advanced technology, which they slowly leaked into the public every three to four decades, yet he had something that allowed him to influence events on a large scale with only a few precise actions. How was that possible?

They called him Phantom Scythe because they had overheard a few conversations involving Domrik Lazen, and the term stuck. They only knew what he wanted them to know about him. That’s why they were able to prepare for the strike on Ridgemire.

Kyreeda chuckled to herself as she shot down two targets at once. Crainen had acted like he was the one who planned the strike and sent the undercover Sylgan scientists into a panicked frenzy. Perhaps he was just excited to see the brand-new method of warfare in action.

The training session finished, and she reviewed her score on her way back to the break room. It was almost her best. She wasn’t perfectly efficient like a few of her past sessions, but her reaction time was improving. Soon she might have the best average of the entire Division E. She wished she could compare with results from Division S or Division T, but compartmentalization must be maintained.

The network of narrow hallways to the break room took her past several agents, each of which she could sense stiffen subliminally as she passed. Eye contact was scant at best, as they knew that if she made eye contact, there was a problem. Nobody wanted a problem with her, because it could be the last problem they ever have.

She finished her lunch quickly and went to Communications, which was a large circular chamber with a lanky bearded man sitting in a swivel chair in the center. Countless red squares and rectangles circled around him at varying distances and sizes like a psychedelic chandelier. His wide eyes darted from one data stream to another, never settling for long, never willing to miss the passage of precious data.

“A swift training it was for you,” the man chanted as Kyreeda entered. He made no physical acknowledgement of her. “Enough to coax those angry juices into motion, I assume?”

“I want an update, Makalai, not a lecture,” she said, standing in front of him with folded arms. His trancelike gaze seemed to see right through her. “Have we found any abnormalities with our subject?”

Makalai sneered. “If we can count abnormally confused and distraught, then yes. However, our machinations have yet to bear fruit. No anomalous frequencies of encephalic origin have been detected. And yet I see the reason. While we perform science on the scientist, we must think like the scientist himself! What do they preach as the golden standard? Control! There must be a control, where we know what we are looking for, yet we have only the word of the Scythe, the one known for manipulation and misdirection.”

“Do not tell me you harbor doubts of our unseen helper at a time like this,” Kyreeda scolded. “You know why we have Mr. Norallis. He found a weakness of the Scythe, and we need to how he did it. You saw the footage yourself. A scientist was able to pierce an illusion. It’s only a matter of time before he starts asking why. That is the one question we cannot allow to proliferate.”

Makalai chuckled. “Tell me, Operator, what you think about Kenshlin Master Lazen. He makes no secret of his abilities. Might he not be a worthy control for our cause?”

She glared at him. “And give him a reason and a way to search for us? Don’t be a fool. There’s a reason the Scythe keeps his distance from him.”

“For how many years have we expended agents for the greater cause?” Makalai asked. “Can Mr. Lazen trace a signal through our crosshatched network of relays? Not encephalically! We need only a few seconds of data.”

Kyreeda paused in hesitation, a rare occurrence. She could no longer completely disagree; Hesitation meant a spontaneous change of opinion. “Formulate a message to the Scythe and get his opinion. We should inform him of our new research asset anyway. Leave out its aquatic nature. He probably won’t believe us anyway.”

Makalai obliged, and words appeared before him without any hand movements. He spoke as the paragraph continued to grow. “Should we report on our asset’s cryptic response to Mr. Norallis’s rambunctious awakening?”

“No, nothing of the sort. While we know nothing, we say nothing.”