Web of Chaos - Chapter 18: Escape Part 2

The officer stopped at the end of the aisle, turning to face Kalden’s group. He was a broad-shouldered man with a blue uniform and a jagged scar that ran across his left cheek. “I found something,” he said in a low voice. “Aisle Seven.”

Boots clicked against the marble floor as another man circled around by the room’s outer wall. The first man pulled a grenade from his leather belt pouch and pulled the pin with a distinct click.

“Now!” Kalden shouted.

Arturo pressed a large red button, and his electromagnetic pulse tore through the room. Kalden braced himself for a sense of vertigo, but this was nothing like the anti-mana pulses he knew. Every bulb flickered out, casting the room in sudden darkness. The only light came from the small chamber on the north side—the same one Trask had opened a minute before.

Their attacker tossed the grenade with a practiced flick of his wrist. It bounced and rolled against the polished floor before settling inside the camouflage device.

“Stop cycling!” Kalden told the others. He ignored his own advice and leapt forward, trying to kick back the grenade. It was only an arm's length away. If he could reach it in time . . .

Too slow. The anti-mana pulse stripped his channels bare. His senses failed him, and his knees struck the marble floor. Worst of all, the pulse broke through the team’s Constructs and armor. Their attackers would see everything. Not just Kalden and his teammates, but the dream tablets lined up on the floor.

Pale blue light cut through the darkness as an ice Missile surged toward Kalden. He saw it coming, but he couldn’t stop it in time. Not without his mana.

A pure Construct formed around his team, and the Missile slammed against its pale blue surface. Kalden glanced over his shoulder and saw Akari with her arms outstretched, blocking attacks from both directions.

Arturo still sat on the floor beside her, eyes focused on the golden craft mana that flowed between the dream tablets.

Good. They couldn’t afford any mistakes at this point.

Kalden recovered from the pulse and refilled his own channels. Battle mana flowed to his brain and sharpened his thoughts. At the same time, he cycled pure mana into his camouflage armor, restoring its light-bending effects.

Only a few seconds had passed since they’d lost their cover, and darkness shrouded the room. Maybe their opponent hadn’t gotten a good look at them after all.

The nearest officer launched a second wave of attacks, and Kalden responded with some pure Missiles of his own. These weren’t sharp enough for a lethal blow—just enough to keep his opponent busy.

‘We need to spread out,” he told Akari through their bond. ‘They can’t know we’re defending this aisle.’

‘Working on it,’ she replied.

He and Akari could have made quick work of this fight with their aspects, but they couldn’t give anything away. Even if Glim memory-wiped these guys, that effect could be reversed by another dream artist.

More techniques flashed through the narrow space, and stacks of dream tablets clattered like falling dominos on the marble floor. The scent of flying ice mana stung Kalden’s nostrils—cold and electric like the air before a winter storm.

He aimed his next Missile straight over his opponent’s head before he pulled it back around. The man spun to deflect the attack, and Kalden seized the distraction, charging straight down the aisle.

His opponent hurled several more Missiles like flying chains, trying to wrap themselves around Kalden’s body. He dodged and deflected each one in turn, then he slammed the pocket cell into his opponent’s chest.

The man vanished in the blink of an eye, sucked into the pocket dimension. The air rushed to fill the empty space, but the sound was lost in the chaos.

‘One down,’ he told Akari.

‘Make that two,’ she replied.

‘We’ll surround Trask,’ he said. ‘I’ll make a diversion, and you—’

‘Too late,’ she snapped back. ‘He found me.’

More mana flashed down the nearby aisle, followed by a cloud of icy mist. Kalden tried to sneak up behind Trask, but the man’s senses were too good. He immediately sent a burst of raw power into the floor and vaulted over the nearest shelf, his trench coat billowing behind him.

Kalden and Akari followed him to the north side of the room near the open chamber. More mana soared between them, but Trask kept them at bay with his thick cloud of mist. Ice crystals grew on the floor like living frost, and Kalden felt the chill through his armor.

Akari kept her distance, and Kalden did the same. He could probably withstand the detective’s mind-freeze effects, but that wasn’t their biggest danger. As a knowledge artist, Trask could probably learn things through his techniques. It didn’t help that he’d already fought Akari once before. A fight he wouldn’t soon forget.

‘This isn’t working,’ Akari said through their bond.  ‘I’m gonna displace the pocket cell.’

That sounded risky, but no worse than a drawn-out fight. Trask was far more dangerous than his companions, and time favored him.

‘Fine,’ Kalden said. ‘What do you need?’

‘Slide some tablets by his feet.’ No sooner had Akari spoken than she sent a volley of blazing blue orbs through the air.

Kalden seized the distraction and grabbed a handful of dream tablets from the nearest shelf. He slid several across the floor like flying discs, using bursts of mana to increase their speed. Each one skimmed across the icy surface, leaving trails in the broken frost.

Trask immediately dodged the tablets, recognizing the threat for what it was. But this sent him toward Akari who hurled her own tablets at his feet.

His muscles tensed for another leap, but Kalden struck the man’s shoulder with a Missile. The impact sent him staggering toward another tablet. Akari swapped that tablet with a pocket cell, and Trask flickered out of existence.

Sirens wailed in the distance, and red and blue lights shone through the room’s stained glass windows.

Kalden jogged back toward Aisle Seven and found Arturo packing up the tablets. “Everything good?” he asked him.

Arturo gave a quick thumbs up as he placed the originals back on their shelves.

“Okay.” Kalden checked his watch and found they still had several minutes to spare. He toward back toward Akari. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t,” she said in a panicked tone. “That AMP broke my portal.”

“What? I thought you weren’t cycling.”

“That’s not how it works.” Arturo ran a hand over the top of his helmet. “The pulse kills your active techniques. Doesn’t matter if you stop cycling or not.”

“Damnit.” Kalden glanced around the room, searching for another way out. This building would be surrounded in thirty seconds, so that ruled out the front door. “What about the windows?” He gestured toward the outer wall. “Can we get those open?” They’d done it during the qualifying rounds, so it should be possible to recreate that in the real world.

Arturo shook his head. “The wards are controlled from downstairs. That maintenance door was the weakest link. And don’t forget, the police chief’s waiting for us back at the Mirage.”

Kalden cursed again. The police chief was a Master who could read lies as clear as a written confession. He and Akari had to step out from the bathroom as if nothing had happened.

He rounded on Arturo. “You left some bags back at the Mirage. Can we escape through the spatial delivery network?”

Arturo had explained this system back in Vordica. Apprentices like him didn’t have the mana reserves to support large pocket spaces, so they outsourced the cost to a third-party service. These services came with a network of portals that let you access the contents of a separate vault, regardless of which bag you carried.

And if that was true, then why couldn’t humans travel from one bag to another?

Arturo let out a long breath inside his mask. “Not that easy, shoko. Each vault comes with a time bubble. That’s why food doesn’t spoil in there. We’ll freeze if we go in. Dead till someone revives us.”

“I can stop a time bubble,” Akari said. “My mom showed me how.”

“Still,” Arturo said. “We’d need to . . .”

The sirens grew louder and Kalden’s aspect sent him a mental warning. “Either we take the bags or we rush out the front door. What’s it going to be?”

“The bag,” Akari said at once. “I can do it.”

“Good. Let’s talk while we work.”

They set to it. Akari and Arturo managed to stop the first time bubble, while Kalden retrieved Glim from her battery. After a brief exchange with the mana spirit, he released Trask and his friends from their pocket cells. Glim used a single technique to knock them unconscious and wipe their memories from the past hour. She only had a few seconds of power, but a few seconds was all she needed.

“One last thing,” Arturo held up his bag. “We can’t leave any evidence behind. I hope you have a way to get rid of this.”

Kalden cycled knowledge mana to his pouch and produced a boulder-sized bomb. He'd never tested this one, but it probably held enough destruction mana to destroy a small building.

“Yeah,” Arturo finished. “You still scare me sometimes, shoko.”

Not wanting to destroy any dream tablets, Kalden led the team toward the open chamber on the north side of the room. The wards here were even stronger than the rest of the library, so it should contain the blast radius.

Kalden stopped in the open doorway, and his breath escaped in a puff of white smoke. The room beyond felt as cold as Vordica, and a glass cylinder hung from the ceiling, filled with a complex setup of golden plates, rods, and wires. Several desks surrounded the strange apparatus, complete with monitors and keyboards

What the hell was that thing? Oh well, they didn’t have time for questions. Maybe they could—

“Holy shit in Talek’s beard.” Akari followed Kalden into the room, then she rounded on Arturo. “Pass me a bag. Quick”

Arturo handed her a bag without comment, and Akari unleashed a storm of spacetime Missiles through the room. Portals sprang to life on the floor and ceiling, and the desks fell into the bag.

“What are you doing?” Kalden asked.

“What’s it look like?” she replied. “We’re taking this.” Akari formed a portal beneath the strange cylinder, while another technique unhooked the device from the ceiling. “They already know someone broke in.” The device fell in slow motion, even after she’d unhooked it from the ceiling. It must have an advanced warding system to protect it from sudden movements.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs behind him, and Kalden closed the chamber door. “Fine. Let’s just go.”

He set the bomb with a ten-second timer, and the display flashed red as it began its countdown.

Akari opened another portal in the wall, and the three of them piled into Arturo’s bag.