The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (80 page)

Chapter 13 — Tarik

I kept an eye on Hayli, even as the two scientists debated
over what they would do with me.  She seemed to be enduring well enough, but I
could see the bird instinct in her wild eyes, looking always and everywhere for
a way to escape.  I only wanted to comfort her, but I couldn’t, not across all
this distance.

“Come on,” Kippler said suddenly, waving me and my guards
forward.

He pointed us to a strange device along the opposite wall. 
I’d noticed it when they brought me in, but I hadn’t had a good chance to
examine it.  I frowned at the thing, wondering what madman had developed it,
praying that it hadn’t been Dr. Alokin.  The EMS device resembled an open
semi-circular chamber, with something like a medical stretcher standing
vertical beneath a crown-shaped ring of brass.  A multitude of wires sprouted
from the top of it, like some sort of bizarre tree, twisting away into the
shadows behind a console of ominous-looking dials and gauges.

It would figure
, I thought with a wry smile,
that
this would be the first—and maybe only—crown I ever wear.

“You really suppose this will work on me?” I asked Kippler
as the guards marched me forward.  “You really believe you can switch off my
magic like an electrical lamp by sticking me in that thing?”

“Quiet,” Kippler snapped, standing at the console.  “It’s
really just an inversion of the hypnosis device we use.  That device amplifies
the electro-magnetic impulse that seems somehow linked to your magic.  This one
suppresses it.  Smothers it, if you will.  You won’t be able to do anything
after we’re done for you.”  He narrowed his eyes.  “Permanently.”

“And this is your first time testing it, isn’t it?”

Dr. Kippler frowned.  “I have no doubts that it will work,
if that’s what you’re asking.

I smiled and turned to survey the room.  Four guards had
been left posted outside the building’s huge door, with six guards standing in
a row across the inside of it.  I had two guards flanking me, and I counted
perhaps eight others on the floor.  Two squads.  I could handle that, if I
could just get the chance.

I turned to watch Toma as he worked on the stretcher,
untying all the multiple straps so they could fasten me in.  He glanced at me
over his shoulder, a closed, quiet kind of look, then he turned to Kippler.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to switch his cuffs from back to
front.  Otherwise we won’t be able to tie him down properly.”

Kippler didn’t glance up from his gauges, just flicked a
hand over his shoulder.  “Fine, just be fast.  Don’t trust him.”

Toma met my gaze again, and turned purposefully back to the
stretcher.  I grinned.  Waited while one of the guards sighed and dragged out
his ring of keys, and slipped one into the lock on my manacles. 

I felt the precise instant the lock gave, then everything
happened in a blur.  As soon as the cuff opened I slammed an elbow back, felt
it smash into the guard’s throat.  Spun and grabbed the other guard’s rifle. 
Drove the barrel of the gun into his face, watched him stagger and collapse. 
Drew back the rifle’s bolt, and turned to fix my sights straight on Dr.
Kippler. 

He froze, pale with terror, both hands hovering, shaking,
somewhere near his head.  I reached down and grabbed my open manacles from the
ground and tossed them to Toma, then pocketed the ring of keys the guard had
dropped.

“Put him in cuffs,” I said, giving an edge to my voice so it
sounded like an intimidation.  I really didn’t want Toma being arrested as a
traitor too.

Toma fumbled with them, but as he fastened them around
Kippler’s wrists, he gave me a hidden sort of smile.  I nodded, barely, and
turned to the factory floor to face the other guards.  But I winced and threw
my arm over my eyes because the sun…the sun blazed so bright on the swallowing
sea, the pulling sea…the crashing waves…

I staggered and shouldered the rifle again, blinking to
drive away the image. 

Focus
, I told myself. 
Focus
.

Fourteen guards held fourteen rifles aimed at me.  I smiled,
because really, they should have known better by now than to try that trick.  I
stretched out my hand, and the sun blazed red and brightest white, showering
light like raindrops.  And I was screaming, on my knees.  Other voices screamed
with me, and somewhere, something fell with a deafening crash.  When the
blindness faded, I saw what I’d done.  I hadn’t just taken the rifles.  I’d
dragged down the walkover.  One of the guards had been unlucky enough to be
caught under it, and now he lay motionless.  Somehow I knew he wouldn’t move
ever again.

I swallowed and used the rifle to push myself to my feet. 
The world spun and I tasted blindness and fear…

I bit down hard on my tongue, hoping the pain would drive
back the madness, and waved the rifle at the remaining guards.  They held up
their empty hands and retreated into two knots, one by the collapsed walkover,
the other by the door.

“You won’t win,” one of them said.  “The guards outside will
have fired a flare gun, of course, soon as you made that racket. 
Reinforcements are already on their way, and then you will all die.”

And it will take them two hours to reach us,
I thought,
but I said, “No.  If any one of you moves, you will all die.  Now, who’s got
the key that will unlock their chains?”  The guards just stared at me, so I
pointed at the unconscious guards by the EMS device.  “Will that key work?  The
one they used on mine?”

“It’s not the same lock,” one of them said.

“Who has the key to their chains?” I asked again, then
shouted, “Who has it?”  Behind me, I heard Dr. Kippler laughing, and I spun
toward him.  “Do you have something to tell me?”

“I had the key,” he said, with a smile like a devil.

“Had?”

He jerked his head toward the drainage grates that edged the
whole factory floor.  “You might find it down there.  As soon as you turned on
your guards, I got rid of it.”

I swore and dragged my hand over my head.

Kill him
, a vicious voice whispered deep in my mind. 
You know what he is.  Do everyone a kindness and make him pay for the lives
of all the mages he has killed.

I raised the rifle to my shoulder, staring down its barrel
at Dr. Kippler’s head.  I felt nothing.  Knew nothing but the pulse of blood in
my ears, and the coldness in Dr. Kippler’s eyes.  I counted ten slow beats of
my heart and let out my breath, and lowered the rifle.

“You will pay for your crimes,” I said.  “But I’m not a
murderer like you.” 

Still, it didn’t keep me from using the butt of the gun to
render him unconscious.  Once he was down, I turned away and scanned the rifle
over the two groups of guards.  “Don’t any of you move.”

As soon as I was sure they would obey me, I turned and made
my way straight for Hayli.  Tears streaked her cheeks, but she had that brave,
fierce light in her eyes that I loved so much.

“Hayli,” I murmured, stopping in front of her.  “I’m so
sorry.  I don’t have the key.”

“No,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. 
“I’m sorry.  After Bugs…after that…I was so cruel, but you came back for me
anyway…”

I swallowed hard, and bowed my head.  “I deserved it.  Every
word you said.”

“No.  Shade, I’d take a lashing twenty times over if it
meant I could take back those words.  What Bugs did…he saved your life.  And it
was worth saving.  Dan’ you ever doubt that.  D’you hear me?  It was worth
saving.”

I stared at the stained cement floor, not trusting my
voice.  Finally I lifted my eyes to hers and said, quietly, “I’ll make it worth
saving.”

She smiled, snaring my heart.  I set down the rifle and took
another step toward her, still so far away, so impossibly far away.

“Listen, Shade.  You have to gan out of here,” she
whispered.  “Dan’ let them do aught to you.”

“How, Hayli?” I asked.  “They locked the door from the
outside.”

“Use one of the guards.  Make him ask the sergeant to open
the door for you.  Then get out!  Get out and get to safety.  We’ll be fine. 
We’ll…we’ll get through it.”

“No.”  I turned away, dragging my hand across my head.  “I’m
not going to leave you.  You really think these grobbing guards are going to
stay true to their word?  Honestly?  Almost  every mage in Brinmark who hasn’t
been killed by these fanatics is chained in this room.  See those holes?”  I
nodded toward the wall behind her, where I’d spotted several ominous looking
black holes spaced at precise distances.  “At a word they could flood this
whole room with gas.  Every last one of you would be dead in an instant.  I
can’t…I can’t leave you to that fate.”

Close behind me, almost in my ear, I heard the click of a
hammer being cocked.

“Shade!” Hayli gasped, straining to reach me.  “Look out!”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw one of the guards
standing directly behind me, gun aimed at my head.  I turned to the row of
mages, all staring at me, and held up my hands.

“You could have warned me he was moving,” I said.

“You’re brave, I’ll give you that,” the guard said.  “But
this is the end of the line for you, Mage.  I don’t care what those damn boffins
say, you’re a menace, and you will be executed.”

I swallowed and turned to face him.  The white electrical
lights blazed like suns overhead.

“You fools,” I said.  “You always make this mistake.”

“What?” he asked, his fingers twitching on his revolver.

I lunged toward him, grabbing his wrist with one hand and
his shoulder with the other, twisting his arm back.  When I had him pinned I
wrenched the revolver from his hand and slammed the grip against the back of
his head.

He crumpled to the ground, and I said, “You always
talk
. 
You should have just killed me.”

I tucked the revolver in my belt and turned back to Hayli,
taking a few steps closer to her.  My heart hammered like mad.  Funny, it had
nothing to do with the notion that I’d just escaped an execution.

“What’re we ganna do?” she whispered, head bent.  I could
see the faintest trace of tears on the tips of her lashes.  “We’re all ganna
die.”

“There’s a way,” I said.  “But you’re not going to like it.”

She jerked her head up to stare at me.  All the grief
vanished from her eyes, driven out by a terrible fury. 

“No.  Shade, no,” she said.  “Dan’ even think about it. 
It’s too dangerous.  You’re…you’re falling apart already.  Can’t you see?  Look
what happened with that walkover!  I can’t let that happen to you.”

She turned aside, clamping down on her lower lip.

“You don’t know all of what I’m about to do,” I murmured,
taking one more step toward her.  I stood nearer to her now than I ever had
before, and I could almost feel the hum of the air between us.  “Hayli,
there’s…there’s something you need to know about me.”

Her gaze flashed back to mine, surprised, as if she didn’t
realize I’d come so close.  I swallowed and cursed myself under my breath.

Then I reached out and clasped her arms.

Nothing could have prepared me for the pulse that tore
through me at the touch.  Hayli jolted, gasping.  After a moment she flinched
and pulled a step back, confusion warring with wonder in her eyes.

“I’ve…I’ve felt that before.”

I drew a thin breath.  “I know,” I said.  “You felt it the
first time we touched.”

And I waited, my heart paralyzed, watching her face turn a
perfect shade of white.  Her eyes widened.

“Oh…oh God.  No.”

“Hayli,” I whispered.

She didn’t say anything else, but her lips parted like she
wanted to speak.  And before I could think, I slipped my hand behind her neck
and drew her close, and placed on those lips the kiss I’d wished for a thousand
times or more.  Electricity shivered through me. 

All at once I felt the energy of the whole universe around
me.

The earth moving beneath me, the course of the stars
wheeling above.

The long death of rocks and the breath of space and the
forgotten souls of forgotten men.

The quiet song of the moon, the longing of rain, the wild
rapture of lightning twined with thunder.

Stronger than anything I felt the warmth of Hayli’s spirit,
the sweetness of her mouth against mine.

Overhead, every one of the electrical bulbs crackled and
dimmed.  I could feel it like the burn of blood in my veins.  Could feel the
energy in them straining toward me, a thin wire pulled taut, coming to my
command.

I reached one hand upward, and closed my fist, and every
light in the building shattered and went black. 

Cries of alarm tore the darkness, but I ignored them all.  I
held Hayli, and the whole mad and shining universe held us in that moment, that
one moment I would have died to prolong.  But already the electricity I’d drawn
in from the lights wreathed my hand, sparking with a blue sheen, like Alokin’s
lightning device.  In some corner of my mind I realized I could bridle that
power—but not for long.

My fingers stirred in the feather-soft fringes of Hayli’s
hair.  I could feel the pulse in her throat beneath my thumb, tremulous as a
bird’s.  I could taste the salt of her tears.

The static surged down my arm with a force like fire.  I
released her with a gasp of pain and reeled back, pushing her away before the
electricity could reach her.

“No, Shade!” she cried, staring at the web of sparks, then
at my face again with the shock of realization.  “
Tarik
.”

I gave her a faint smile.  “Call me Shade,” I said, and
sucked in a gulp of air through clenched teeth.

There was too, too much to say, and I had no more time.  I
winced and pushed back against the creeping lightning, giving myself one more
moment to twist my fingers in the wisps of her hair.