When it came to bases of operations, Richard’s side had the advantage. The Council operates out of various facilities spread throughout Britain. They’re well fortified, but there are a lot of them, and they’re valuable, public, and, most of all, stationary targets. The Council couldn’t abandon them, which meant a massive commitment of men and resources to defend them all. By contrast, Richard’s side had no facilities left in Britain, or at least none that anyone knew about. The mansions of Richard and his supporters had all been attacked by Council forces in the first months of the war, and rather than stand and fight, the Dark mages had abandoned their homes and withdrawn, hiding away in shadow realms or far-distant corners of the world. And shadow realms are much harder to attack than mansions. The Council was currently working to locate Richard’s centre of operations, but if he had one, they hadn’t found it.
But it’s not practical to put everything in a shadow realm. For one thing, shadow realms are limited in quantity, with demand exceeding supply. For another, there are some things that shadow realms are bad at. You can’t run modern communications, nor anything that requires a lot of external resources or utilities. And there are certain types of magical research that can’t be done in shadow realms, or can only be done in a specific type of shadow realm that the mage might not have access to. So if one of the mages on Richard’s team wanted to do some R & D, they’d often have to hide it in a place like this.
There was a reason I was taking a special interest in this particular facility. Our source had claimed that it was being run by Crystal, a renegade Light mage who’d fled Britain years ago under sentence of death. This was the first time her name had been linked to Richard, but I had my own reasons for suspecting that there might be a connection between the two of them. And on top of that, I knew that she wanted Anne. Crystal was in possession of a flawed immortality ritual, and she believed Anne was the missing ingredient that would make it work. I didn’t know whether she was right or wrong, and given that Anne wouldn’t survive the process, I didn’t particularly care. Crystal had made several attempts on Anne’s life, and if I had the chance, I was going to kill her. The fact that she happened to be working for Richard was just a convenient excuse.
“We’ll sweep the facility,” I said. “Search room by room, make sure it’s clear. Try not to damage anything you don’t have to. Assuming we don’t find anyone to question—which we probably won’t—we’re going to be combing through everything we find. Documents, computers, research. Anything that might give us a lead on where to go next.”
“Don’t break the toys, we get it,” Little said. “You taking point again?”
I nodded. “Follow my lead.”
The facility was dark and silent, empty corridors and abandoned rooms. With no airflow or connection to the outside, it was hard to tell how long it had stood unused: it could have been weeks or only hours. There was an unpleasant metallic scent to the air that made me think of blood.
“Well, they were definitely working on something,” Variam said. The two of us were in some kind of testing chamber, with workbenches and an open space at the far end. “Question is what.”
“Not sure.” I was leafing through some notes that had been left on one of the benches, reading by the orange-red light of Variam’s magic. “But my guess is that it had combat applications.”
“That what it says?”
“No, this is nothing but numbers.” I pointed at the open part of the room. “But see the marks on the floor and against the wall? They look like the kind you’d use for target mounts.”
“We sure it was Crystal running things?”
“Can’t see her name, but she’s not exactly going to be signing timesheets. Hopefully once we’ve cleared this place out we can call in a time mage.”
Variam snorted. “Good luck. They have a waiting list a mile long these days.”
My communicator pinged and a voice spoke into my ear. “Ilmarin to Verus.”
I put the notes down. “Go ahead.”
“West wing is clear,” Ilmarin said. “There are some living quarters and a kitchen; apparently this place was fitted for long-term use. All deserted, but Mage Walker believes she’s found something.”
“What kind of something?”
“There’s another vault door at the end of the wing. Airtight. Apparently there’s someone or something inside.”
“We’re on our way.”
The vault door that Ilmarin and Anne had found looked similar to the one at the entrance. It was at the end of a corridor; security men were waiting at the intersections, the torches on their weapons casting white beams that left their faces in shadow. I walked to the front, moving from darkness to light to darkness again. “What have we got?”
“There’s someone on the other side,” Anne said. Like Ilmarin, she didn’t wear armour; unlike Ilmarin, she didn’t have a shield. Her clothes were reinforced, but not heavily; it was an argument I’d had with her many times and one that I was yet to win. “A boy, early twenties. He’s awake but he’s not moving.”
“Only one?” Variam asked.
“I think so.”
“Human?” I asked. Given the sorts of things we’d found in Richard’s other research facilities, it was a very relevant question.
Anne hesitated. “Probably.”
“What do you mean ‘probably’?” Variam said.
“I can’t sense anything abnormal in his pattern,” Anne said. “No injuries, no signs of deprivation. He seems in perfect health.”
“Okay?” I said.
“So why is he in perfect health?” Anne asked. “The facility’s power is out. And from the look of it, he’s locked in. Either they only just left and he’s been in there a few hours at most, or . . .”
“Or what?”
“I don’t know, but something doesn’t feel right.”
I thought about it for a second, then nodded. “We’ll assume he’s an enemy until proven otherwise. Give him a chance to come peacefully, but if he doesn’t, weapons free. Little, have your men behind us. Cover all angles.”
“Understood.”
“Looks like I’m not getting this one open,” I said. The door was equipped with a retinal scanner. In theory Anne might be able to trick it, but those kinds of changes aren’t her speciality and I didn’t want to waste time. “Vari, you’re up.”
A blade of searing red ignited at Variam’s hand as everyone else stepped well back. Variam pushed the blade of fire into the door, leaning into it. The metal turned red, then yellow, then white. An unpleasant smell filled the air, something like burnt oil, along with an acrid vapour that stung the throat.
Variam made a long curving cut along the left side, and a short one to the right where the lock was. By the time he was finished, the air in the corridor was hot and I was sweating in my armour. The gashes in the metal glowed red, slowly cooling. “That should be the hinges,” Variam said, stepping back.
Ilmarin took his place. The air mage waited for Variam to get clear, then raised a hand. My hair fluttered as a breeze swept down the corridor, coalesced, then struck the vault door like a sledgehammer. With a screech of tortured metal, the door fell out of its frame, hitting the floor with a boom.
Mage lights flew into the room, orange-red from Vari, silver-grey from Ilmarin. They illuminated a wide circular chamber, stairs running up to inset rooms on the left and right. The black screens of display monitors hung on the walls, but the only movement was the back-and-forth flicker of the lights.
“Can’t see him,” Variam said. He was cooling off the door, spreading the heat out of the metal so that it would be safe to walk on, watching the room out of the corner of his eye.