Author: Benedict Jacka
Category: Science
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/benedict-jacka/page,11,482328-fallen.html
“Seen your moves before, Alex,” Caldera said. “Blind first, then go for the stun.”
“Let her go,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You surrender, I’ll let her go. How long you think she’ll last without air?”
I lunged. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I was trying to think of what I could do. Using mist or dousing Caldera’s light wouldn’t do much, and a forcewall wouldn’t help me get Anne out. That just left my more lethal weapons, but they’d do nothing unless I could disable Caldera’s protective spells.
I tried my dispel focus. It worked, but Caldera was ready for it, renewing her stone skin immediately. I got more hits in as she did, but none of them were enough to knock her out.
Caldera fell back, on the defensive but unhurt. “No trucks this time,” she told me. She spread her hands wide. “Bring it.”
I hesitated for an instant. There was one thing I could do. Break past Caldera, use a forcewall to seal the corridor, and run. Come back for Anne later . . .
. . . there wouldn’t be a later. “It’s me you want, right?” I said. “Let Anne go and I’ll stay with you.”
Caldera gave me a pitying look. “Arrest warrant was for you both. And if I could only get one, orders were to make it her. But honestly? I’m looking forward to taking you down as well.”
I could hear footsteps from behind; we were nearly out of time. Desperately, I threw myself at Caldera.
But Caldera was stronger than me, and tougher than me, and I was running out of tricks. My blows kept landing, but they were hurting me more than her. Caldera barely even needed to block.
I kicked Caldera’s leg out, but the impact sent a jolt of pain through my knee and I didn’t get out of the way quite fast enough. Caldera’s punch hit my thigh like a hammer, making me stumble.
I jumped back, nearly falling. “You’re just making things worse for yourself, Alex,” Caldera said.
“Screw you.”
Caldera came at me like a bulldozer, slow and heavy and unstoppable. I blocked and dodged, but I was tired now, hurt. I ducked one blow and my leg gave way from underneath me. Before I could get out of the way, Caldera stamped on my ankle, making me gasp.
“Don’t get up,” Caldera told me.
I got up.
Caldera was waiting. She struck again, and this time, she finally managed a clean hit. The world flashed white, then red, then I was falling through darkness, thought and sensation fading away.
chapter 6
Pain.
I woke up slowly and unpleasantly. Lots of places hurt, but the worst was my head, jagged and sharp. I shifted and realised I was lying on a hard surface. I could hear voices around me, the murmur of conversation, someone giving orders. I tried to orient myself. This felt like Arachne’s cave . . .
Arachne.
I tried to sit up. The pain in my head became a white-hot spike and I vomited. Nausea and agony drowned out all thought for a while.
After some length of time my head and stomach stopped hurting enough for my mind to start working again. The voices were still talking, and now added to them I could hear rustling and thumps. I cracked open an eye, moving more cautiously this time. The light hurt, but no more so than everything else, and I looked around.
I was in Arachne’s lair, in one of the far corners. Council personnel were scattered throughout the cave, and it was their voices I’d heard. They were searching the place, shaking out clothing and pulling out cushions. As I watched, a security man dumped a bolt of cloth onto the floor with a thump, then started pushing at it with a boot. I wasn’t up to using my divination, but through my magesight I could sense spells.
I tried to shift position and realised that my hands were held behind my back. Cautiously I explored with my fingers and touched cold metal. Handcuffs. I lay still, trying to think of options. No good ones came to mind, and the pain in my head wasn’t making it any easier. All I could think of was my lockpicks, but I wasn’t sure I had them anymore: my pockets felt lighter than they should have been.
The men around the chamber were still working. There were a lot of them, but Arachne’s lair is a big place, and they apparently weren’t in any hurry. I tried again to sit up, and still failed, though at least I didn’t throw up this time. Footsteps approached from my blind side and I held still.
A pair of heavy boots came into my vision. “You awake?” Caldera said from what felt like a long way above.
I couldn’t have answered even if I’d wanted to. Caldera hauled me into a sitting position, propping my back against the wall. Another wave of nausea rolled over me, and I fought to keep myself from vomiting again. Once my vision cleared, I saw that Caldera was squatting down in front of me. She held one finger up, and pale brown light glowed from the tip.
“You see the light?” Caldera asked. She moved it from side to side; my eyes tracked it with difficulty. “Is it blurry? Doubled?”
Focusing on the light was too hard. I closed my eyes and tried to talk. “Why?”
“You’ve got a concussion,” Caldera said. “Don’t move your head around. We’ll get a life mage to look at you.”
I would have laughed if I could. I’ll get healed before I’m executed. How nice.
Caldera stayed squatting in front of me. All around, the search continued. “Who was it?” I said, not opening my eyes.
“Who was what?”
“Who signed the death warrant this time?”
“There’s no death warrant.”
I cracked my eyes open. Caldera was looking at me eye to eye. “What there is,” Caldera said, “is an indictment. For you to be held for questioning.”
“Levistus finally got his four votes?”
Caldera looked at me with something like pity. “It wasn’t four. It was seven.”
The last struggling hopes within me died. I wanted to believe that Caldera was lying, but I’d worked with her long enough to know she wasn’t. “What’s the charge?”
“The charge is,” Caldera said, “that you are responsible for the San Vittore attack. Eighteen counts of murder, three counts of treason, and one count of assisting in the escape of a mage prisoner. Plus assault, grievous harm, and destruction of Council property, but we can probably put that aside for now.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall. It was what I’d expected. Honestly, it was what I’d been expecting for a long time.
“Going to deny it?” Caldera said.
“Is there any point?”
“Could be. Because you didn’t actually do most of that stuff. Did you?”
I opened my eyes to look at Caldera. “You think I’m innocent now?”
“Oh, you’re guilty of some of it,” Caldera said. “But the murders and the prisoner escape? We both know who did that.”
I was silent. “You can stop lying, Alex,” Caldera said. “We know what really happened.”
“Because of you,” I said. “Right? You were the one to figure it out.”
Caldera just looked at me.
“How?”
“I told you,” Caldera said. “I know a bullshit story when I hear one. I knew you were lying at the inquest. Just didn’t know why.”
“And so you put Sonder on it.”
“Don’t blame this one on Sonder,” Caldera said. “He tried to duck out of it. I had to call in favours and go over his head. And in the meantime, I kept digging. Tried to figure out what really happened in San Vittore. I’ve been working that case for months on my own time. And I didn’t find shit. You know why?”
I wasn’t in the mood for this. “No.”
“I was looking for the wrong thing,” Caldera said. “For evidence of you colluding with Morden or Drakh, or some crime you’d done at the scene, or some backroom deal you didn’t want to come out. Came up empty every time, and I couldn’t figure o
ut why. What was so important to you that you’d throw out all that smoke?”
I was silent.
“That day in the courtroom, I was about ready to give it up,” Caldera said. “And then I remembered that there was one thing I hadn’t looked into. I’d checked everything about you, but I hadn’t checked the person you went in with. And when I started thinking about that, I remembered what happened a few years ago, back before you became an auxiliary. When she got snatched by those Dark apprentices, you didn’t just look into it, did you? You chased them blind right into a shadow realm. And that made me wonder—maybe you weren’t doing this for yourself after all. Maybe you were protecting someone.”
“Well, you figured it all out,” I said. I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “You won, I lost, you proved you’re smarter than me. Is that what you want to hear?”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Caldera said. “You become a sanctioned witness, you waive your rights and agree to give a verified confession, I’ll make your sentence as lenient as I can. You still have a few friends on the Council. I’ll even testify myself. I figure I owe you that much.”
“That’s your deal?”
“Best you’re going to get.”
I looked away.
“Alex,” Caldera said. “Let’s get real, okay? They’re getting your confession. Either you give it up voluntarily, or the mind mages pull it out of your head.”
“Now who’s talking bullshit?” I said. “There’s not going to be any lenient sentence. Levistus and Sal Sarque have been wanting this for years. There’s only one sentence they’re going to sign off on.”
“You knew the game when you sat down to play.”
“A game?” Suddenly I was furious. “Fuck you. This was only a game for you. For you this was about your job and your ego. For me it was life and death.”
Caldera shrugged.
“Where’s Anne?”
“She’s not your concern anymore.”
“I want to see her.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” Caldera looked at me. “That offer of leniency? Doesn’t include her.”
I swallowed. My throat was suddenly dry. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“You know what she did.”
“It won’t happen again.” I hated how weak my words sounded, but I had to try. “She can control it now.”
“That’s not your choice to make.”
“She was possessed, she wasn’t the one making the decisions. You have to know that.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t just kill her!”
“That adept your team ran into in that Devon facility was possessed by a jinn too,” Caldera said. “What did you do to him?”
We killed him. I couldn’t say that out loud. “That’s different.”
“Alex, she killed eighteen people,” Caldera said. “And those are just the ones we know about. I know she wasn’t in control of her own actions. I know this is the latest piece of shitty luck in what’s been a pretty shitty life. But the law says she has to go, and the law’s right. She’s a danger to everyone else.”
“If it means losing her, I don’t care about everyone else.”
Caldera raised her eyebrows. “You really mean that?”
I didn’t answer. Caldera rose and walked away.
The men around us were still working. Some of them were starting to pack Arachne’s clothing and gear away into boxes. It was the same treatment we’d given the facility in Devon. It felt a lot different having it happen to a place I’d thought of as home. I tried to think of something I could do and came up blank.
I didn’t have long to wait. Caldera came back and hauled me to my feet. “Up.”
“Where are we going?”
It was a pretty pointless question, and Caldera didn’t bother to answer. She just put an arm through mine and dragged me.
I craned my neck, trying to ignore the pain in my head. There were various Keepers and security men around. Few were ones I knew, and the ones I did know were all ones I recognised for the wrong reasons. They’d probably gone out of their way to pick Keepers who didn’t like me. But it was Anne I was really looking for.
Then I saw her, and stopped dead. Or would have if it had been up to me. Caldera dragged me along. “What the hell?” I said.
“Keep walking, Alex.”
Anne was being led out from one of the back rooms, and she was so heavily restrained that I could barely tell it was her. A hood covered her entire head, her arms were bound behind her in a single sleeve, and her ankles were linked by a chain so she was forced to take short, shuffling steps. A pair of security men directed her with rods fixed to a collar around her neck. Two more mages and four more security men formed a perimeter around her, watching with a wary eye.
“Why are you treating her like that?” I demanded.
“Because she’s dangerous enough to need it,” Caldera said. She hadn’t slowed down, and now she pushed me forward into the tunnel leading out. I craned my neck to try to see Anne, but I’d already lost sight of her.
“She wasn’t threatening any of you! The only reason she even—”
“Take it up with HQ.”
Caldera marched me up the tunnel. I tried to reach out to Anne, talk to her, but my dreamstone was gone. Caldera kept me moving, not letting me hang back to let the others catch up.
The difference between how Anne and I were being treated said a lot about how much of a threat they thought I was, and the bitter part was that they were right. Right now, there was nothing at all I could do to stop Caldera from taking me away. Once we got to the surface and away from the cave’s wards, they’d take us through a gate, probably to San Vittore or somewhere equally bad. Once they did, I was finished. I’d have no chance of escape. I’d never see Anne again either. And there was nothing I could do about it.
Caldera led me out into Hampstead Heath. It was night and the Heath was quiet, the lights of Highgate glinting from across the ponds, the park itself dark and still. The air was still warm from the evening, and trees were black silhouettes against the sky.
A Keeper was waiting for us at the entrance. His name was Avenor; I’d never liked him much, and from the way he ignored me and addressed Caldera, he didn’t seem very cut up about my current status. “Diviner’s pulled out,” he told Caldera. “Last forecast was that everything’s quiet.”
“We clear for a gate?” Caldera asked.
“Got some civilians in the AO. We’ll have them gone in a couple of minutes.”
Caldera nodded and pulled me up the valley and out into the woods.
Once we were twenty feet or so from the ravine, Caldera stopped and we waited in silence. The trees stood around us, just faintly visible in the reflected light from the clouds above. I tried to think of something I could do but Caldera was keeping my arm locked in hers, and her grip was like iron. My head was still spinning and my leg hurt like hell. Even without the handcuffs I knew I’d have no chance against her, but I had to do something. I looked ahead, searching for something, some kind of edge . . .
I went still.
“Sergeant?” Avenor said from near the ravine. “We clear?”
Caldera looked over at him, waiting. Avenor stood for a moment, tapping his foot, then put a hand to one ear, talking into his communicator. “Sergeant Barnes. Please confirm that the civilians have been removed from the area and we’re clear for gate. Over.”
A few seconds passed. “What’s keeping him?” Caldera said.
“No answer.” I couldn’t make out Avenor’s expression, but he sounded irritated. “This is what happens when you count on normals.”
From the ravine, I heard the scrape of footsteps and I knew Anne was being brought up. Caldera sighed and spoke into her own focus. “Keeper Caldera to perimeter team. Need a re
port on those civilians, over.”
Seconds ticked by and I felt Caldera frown. The security men at the front of Anne’s detail climbed up out of the ravine, followed by the two men holding her collar poles. I saw Anne appear in the darkness, looking blindly from left to right. “Perimeter team, report in now,” Caldera said.
“You might want to duck,” I said quietly.
Caldera started to turn.
A bolt of black energy hit Caldera in the chest. Her eyes went wide but she didn’t let go of my arm, and as she fell she dragged me down with her. As I went down I caught a split-second glimpse of a green ray lancing out of the dark, striking one of the men holding Anne’s collar; he arched his back to scream and was gone in a flash of dust.
Caldera and I hit the ground, pain jolting through my head and leg. Shouts echoed through the night; there was the muzzle flash and chatter of automatic weapon fire, three-round bursts going ratatat, ratatat. A fireball burst next to us with a wash of hot air, lighting up the Council troops in hellish red. Caldera rolled, taking cover behind a tree. “Keeper Caldera to all units, we’re under attack at the cave entrance! Enemy force with battle-mages. Reinforce immediately, over!”
Caldera had lost her grip on me when she fell, and I’d taken the opportunity to duck away. She came up to one knee, looking around; her gaze fell upon me. “Alex!” Caldera hissed. “Get here! Now!”
I crouched behind a tree and looked back at her silently. Caldera’s expression darkened. She rose to her feet and stepped towards me.
The night ahead of us went black in an oval-shaped pattern of space magic, masked and opaque. Caldera reacted instantly, moving to attack. A mage jumped through and walked right into Caldera’s punch. He got up a shield but the impact threw him twenty feet into the trees.
Caldera held her ground, blocking the gateway. A muzzle flash strobed from somewhere in the darkness, and bullets ricocheted from her skin. “This is Keeper Caldera!” Caldera snapped into her com. “I repeat, we are under—”
A black-and-green shape came out of the gateway, tall and slim and moving fast. Caldera struck and the figure slid aside; it lashed out and Caldera staggered and fell back. Then I felt the signature of air magic from above, spells lancing down.