A Dance of Past and Present

Immediately After:

We looked at the stairway. There were still further floors below us, and we weren’t sure how much farther down we could go. I started flying up, the surface seemed most logical. “Alice!” Mina called out to me, “Alice, wait up.”

I slowed to a halt, midair, hovering quietly. I took a deep breath and descended back down to where they were. “How much time do you think we have?” I panted.

“Alice, if they haven’t sent people here yet, they’re not planning to,” Bruno held his wing out under me. “Upstairs might be another trap.”

“Are we hoping there’s some secret exit?” My wings flicked back and forth.

“They could be keeping more people downstairs,” Pippa went down one step, the sound of her footstep clanging upward, “we could find your parents there. That’s what we came for, isn’t it?”

The buzzing, iridescent lights flickered off for a moment. We stopped halfway down and held our breath. They flashed back on, then died completely with a pop, casting the stairs into darkness. Bruno’s wing wrapped around the handrail. A set of red emergency lights clicked on. They were dim, and despite being a hot red, they were not warm.

The next landing led to a single metal door, easily opened with the keycard. This long, black hallway was lined with unlocked doors. They were little storage closets filled with file cabinets. Each was neatly organized with lines and lines of paperwork. “Ugh,” Pippa moaned. Her ears folded back, “We’re in a secret government base, and there’s just a bunch of papers?”

“This is Site 1,” Bruno whispered, “some of this stuff is probably important. If anything about the magic-giving drug was kept, it’d probably be here. Besides, there’s probably stuff about who gets paid what.”

“We can steal Mr. Archstar’s salary?” Pippa ripped open the cabinet. She tore papers out, glancing at them for a second before littering them across the sterile floor, “Come on! Help me ransack this place!”

“Mr. Archstar is nice,” I looked away.

“His dad is a demon,” Mina winced, “and no. You’re just a Goodie Twoshoes.”

“How many government facilities have I helped you break into?”

“Two now,” She nodded.

Pippa tore another page out, “Ha! Look at this!” She broke out laughing. The title read Project MKUltra, “Why is the DOO making a Mortal Kombat game?”

“Look at the year,” Mina whispered. She pointed at the top right-hand corner of the page, “those games wouldn’t come out for a few more decades. And besides, you shouldn’t be playing violent games, Pippa.”

Bruno scoffed, “That’s the most of our worries, huh?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being responsible,” Mina huffed. She looked at the page longer, “this is before mom was even born. They were trying to create a magic drug even back then.”

“Astral projection… Psionics…” Pippa read aloud. The page went on and on. There were illegal, uninformed tests on all kinds of sentient creatures. The purported goal was to gain access to magic, and before the Veil fell, most people would have thought that was the end of it. In reality, they were using these illicit means in an attempt to activate the magical gene in people. The page listed how some subjects successfully cast magic, only to die of overexertion immediately after. At the bottom, the signature of Hasdrubal Archstar. The ink shone under the red lights. This was the uncle of Director Archstar. We looked for anything connected in modern papers and found that Director Archstar was the one opposed to the continuation of the magic-drug project.

“What changed?” Bruno muttered. His feathers ruffled slightly. His talons scraped against the tiles on the floor. He grabbed another page. He froze, “This is it…”

“What?” Mina flew over. A long black bar had been plastered over some of the words near the top. What once had been a date now only read 95. We scanned over the words below, skipping past the parts that had been redacted.

—95 for the office of the Secretary of the Occult, Site 1.

The force — blocking — hereafter named the Veil. It may be able to be circumvented or eliminated through the generation of magic as in the case of —- and —-, injected with the prototype on — and —- 1992, as well as —- and — 1995. Once at two weeks and again at six weeks. No negative effects in —-. Reduced growth rate in —-, possibly unrelated.

Our proposal is to create just enough magical individuals as in this incident that the pre-existing strain on the Veil becomes stronger until the Veil breaks. Upon the elimination of the Veil, the project is to be discontinued.

Lady Sparrowbane, Representative

Sally Dreammaker, Senator

Alto Gray, DOO Researcher, Ledoric’s Principal

“This- this isn’t right,” My eyes passed over my mother’s name, “no, it’s forged. The DOO didn’t even exist for another year. It was created in response to…”

“The-the Veil breaking,” Mina shut her eyes slowly, “that’s when they were announced publicly. They must have been made in secret beforehand. Breaking the Veil wasn’t a mistake. It was their job.”

Pippa’s tail ran back and forth, “But the Veil breaking is a good thing, isn’t it? People know about magic, now!”

“They had to give the drug to other people too,” Mina glanced off, “so where are they? The Veil broke. The DOO’s experiment worked. Where are the other people they gave magic to?”

Bruno shook his head, “They’re fine. They’re probably just other students at the school, whatever. I bet that’s why Terrance only discovered his magic when he was older.”

“Yeah…” Pippa looked away. Her tongue caught in her mouth like the words were sour. “So, breaking the Veil could have been a good thing, right?”

“But then why was the project discontinued,” my voice trailed off, “planned to be discontinued, even?”

“What does it matter?”

“If I wasn’t given magic as a baby, I’d be dead, Pippa,” I faced her, “I’d have died without any dignity, and I’d have never had the chance to come back. If Bruno’s right, if Terrance was also given this drug, then the same would be true for him. Pippa, what about everyone else?”

She blinked, “I didn’t mean… I… Alice, that’s not fair.”

“And, Ms. Snowfox seemed to think Mom wanted to continue it,” I flew back and forth slowly, “but this is her signature on this document. They always planned to end it. Why? Mom, why?”

“Because you died…” Mina’s voice trailed off, “I bet that’s why, Alice. She ended it at first just fine, but then because of the drug you were able to come back. Five days.” Mina swallowed. “She didn’t know if you’d come back at all during the five days it took them to revive you. She couldn’t take it. Maybe she started to wonder what other families were like, I don’t know.”

“But, why end it in the first place?” I asked, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” Bruno shook his head, “you saw how afraid those agents were of us acting on our own. You see how tight the security around Maple is. The DOO is afraid of everyone having magic.”

“That’s stupid,” Pippa rolled her eyes.

“Is it?” Mina asked her, “Magic is dangerous. Without proper training, people could overexert and die. Even experts have done so accidentally. We’re just kids, and we’ve already caused a real problem… for a good reason. imagine a few dozen adults screwing up with magic. Imagine if they had the wrong reasons.”

“Resurrection is the main issue,” Bruno looked away, “imagine if the last thing somebody knew was some awful way to die, and they never had another chance.”

“I can imagine!” Mina yelled, “I’ve imagined for years! No thanks to you.” She breathed in and out heavily, struggling to catch her breath, “I… I shouldn’t have said that.”

Bruno met her gaze. The feathers on his chest raised as he took a deep breath, “I know.”

“I’m sorry,” Mina perched on one of the file cabinets.

“You hate me,” Bruno leaned against the wall, “Mina, nobody blames you for that.”

“I’d almost given that up,” She dragged her fingernails down her cheeks, forcing herself not to cry, “this week. This whole time, you- I don’t know if I was wrong about you. I don’t know, and I can’t make myself stop thinking the worst. What’s wrong with me?”

“You don’t have to forget,” he bent down slightly.

“I can’t look the same at you as long as I remember.”

“I don’t need you to look at me like you used to.”

Pippa grabbed another paper, “Hey, they have our grades in here,” she muttered, “anyone got a pen?”

Mina inhaled slowly. She looked between Bruno and Pippa, then buried her head in her knees. For a second, I thought she was crying. She laughed and threw her arms up, “No, Pippa,” she snorted, “what do you need a pen for?”

“I was gonna change my grades,” she mewed.

“Just get better grades in the first place,” I rolled my eyes.

Bruno spread his wings out, “How long are we even going to spend in here?” He leaned down and grabbed the papers we’d found about the magic drug, “We have our smoking gun. Let’s go get your mom, Mina.”

Mina nodded slowly, “Save my mom, and I’ll reconsider.”

“He’s saved me already,” I flew after her.

“Since when do you settle for the bare minimum?” She smirked.

Pippa took her grades with her, stuffing the papers into her pockets, “Why do they even fly these all the way out here.”

“Look at the printing quality,” I flinched as I saw the letter grades for her classes, “it’s just a fax. Writing on this won’t even change anything,”

There were too many rooms of files for us to get lost in this hallway. Ultimately, it didn’t have what we were looking for. We went further downstairs. A sanitized voice rattled through a rusty intercom as we reached a metal door with a little plastic window at the ninth underground floor’s landing. “All personnel stand down. We are in a site-wide lockdown. All personnel stand down. We are in a site-wide lockdown. Operatives have been dispatched to handle the emergency.”

When the door opened, it did so far more quickly than the others. Another locked door was just inside of it, less than three feet away. A blast of air rushed out past us. Bruno stepped inside and I flew after him, and as Pippa and Mina tried to come after us, the door slammed shut. Pippa’s tail nearly got caught in it, and she bounced backward, the fur around her ears sticking up. Mina pressed herself against the plastic window in the top of the door, “Hold on!” She turned around, “Pippa, use the keycard again.”

There was a buzz, then nothing, “I-it’s not working!” Pippa yelped.

“Okay, uh…” Mina looked back and forth, “We’ll see if we can find another way around, you guys hang tight!” They continued down the stairs, the echo of Pippa’s footsteps disappearing just after she descended out of sight. The little metal door in front of us creaked open, while the one behind us stayed sealed shut.

A dejected woman’s voice cut through the room from somewhere past the door. She almost sounded familiar, “Alice, Bruno… I’d come out of there if I were you, that room likes to fill with some kind of nasty gas.” He stepped through the door cautiously, one talon slowly planting itself on the concrete floor. I flew silently after him.

The red emergency lights were disabled here. A little, flickering white light flashed on and off. It hung from a single string in the middle of the room. Bits of wooden furniture were strewn about, blocking the light from reaching the edges of the room. My eyes caught a form, hardly larger than a cat slinking through the shadows. “Who’s there?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” Her voice carried as she darted past a toppled desk. She slipped through a creaking door across the room and into a dark hallway, “There’s no going back the way you came,” she cooed, her words carrying back out of the hall and echoing through our room, “you may as well come with me.” With every word, I thought I knew her more.

Bruno slammed the door open. He listened closely to the sound and followed it with his eyes. There was another flickering light in this hall leading almost a hundred feet toward an end that was barely in sight. More rooms jutted off from it, “She’s fast,” he pointed his wing into one of the rooms, “aren’t you, Ms. Snowfox?”

The arctic fox stepped out of a room halfway down the hall. She sat comfortably in the door frame, her yellow eyes remaining bright whenever the flickering light dulled, “Very good, Bruno. I was hoping one of you would recognize my voice.”

I stayed close to Bruno, “You said to think of you as an enemy the next time we met.”

“And, that is now,” Ms. Snowfox said sadly, “the DOO is quite impressed with you all, dare I say annoyed. They flew me in last night, just in case.”

“They murdered Terrance,” Bruno spat.

Ms. Snowfox’s paws tensed up, pressing firmly against the ground, “You brought him here, didn’t you?” Her snout wrinkled and twitched. She didn’t believe a word she was saying, “Now, I have no choice but to do as I’m told.”

“It’s the two of us against you,” Bruno winced, “please, Bianca, we don’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s one on one.” She shook her head, “Don’t you realize what they want me to do? Why they shut that door as soon as it was the both of you and nobody else?”

“You-you said not to come…”

“If you didn’t think you could control yourself,” Ms. Snowfox’s tail flicked behind her, “I hope your training pays off. I will never forgive myself for what I’m about to do, otherwise. I understand if you’ll both hate me.”

I bent my head down, my wings slowing behind me. “B-Bianca…” I begged, “B-Bianca…” I’d never called her by her first name.

“Be strong now, Alice. You can’t afford to fail here,” Her paw raised slightly and her claws parted. “Behold, the darkest of transformation magic. Fane discovered this himself while researching applications of his favorite kind of spell. This one makes someone manifest a curse they already have, such a cruel thing that Fane only ever entrusted this spell to me.”

Bruno covered his beak with his wings. His talons gave out below him and he fell to the ground. Broken coughs escaped his lungs, blood and brown fur splattering across his feathers. Fangs slowly emerged from his beak. His eyes narrowed and long, furry ears tore through the top of his head. His back grew a layer of thick fur. A werecoyote.

Bianca watched his transformation sadly. She turned and ran down the hall, disappearing somewhere far away before he could pick himself up from the ground. I flew toward the ceiling, hovering in the corner and looking down at him. He couldn’t stay like this for long.

He clawed at his cheek, trying to tear the fur out from below his eye, “A-Alice!” He barked, his voice coming out between a yell and a cough. One of his legs lumbered toward the edge of the room where I was. He grabbed his opposite arm as it tried to scratch against the wall.

I held my breath, quietly flying to the opposite end of the room. I was afraid my wings would get tired from hovering for too long. My brows furrowed as I looked at the monster below me. It couldn’t reach me, I could kill it. That thing that stole my friend from me, I could kill it right now. I shook my head, I had no idea how many Dames that would take. What if I overexerted myself? Then, I wouldn’t be able to fly. If I did it, it needed to kill him for sure.

I tried to make the calculations in my head, the exact amount of Dames I would need. I stopped as I heard footsteps through the wall somewhere. “Come on, this way!” Pippa’s voice cut through the facility from another room, “They should be just around here!”

I froze. Mina couldn’t come in here now. What would become of her? Of Pippa? Bruno rended his sides with his claws, fur and feathers torn out and piling on the ground, “Please! Please!” He begged.

“What do you want from me?” I spat.

“Come here,” He whimpered. He coughed, “I’ll…” His voice shook with menace. He cried out, biting down on his own arm, chewing it to the bone. He breathed heavily, crying, “You’ll be okay! You’ll be okay! I’ll do anything!”

“How did you turn back before?” I pleaded with him.

“Time,” he coughed. His voice curled, blood dripping from his fangs, “you remember don’t you?” He spat the blood on the ground. Bruno screamed, “I was exhausted! I almost cried myself to sleep.” He admitted.

“Do you want me to kill you?” Almost instinctually, I lowered slightly in the air as I talked, still too high for him to reach, “I don’t know if I can.”

“No-no…” His voice quivered. “You couldn’t if you wanted to!” He cackled.

I took a deep breath, “It’s getting stronger, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know how…” Bruno whined, “I trained to stop it. I tried so hard. I tried, Alice, I tried.” He lunged toward me, reaching up in the air playfully, his claws slashing just below my feet, “I win!” Pippa’s footsteps clattered somewhere in the distance. I didn’t know how long it’d be until they got here.

I flew back to the ceiling, “It can get tired?” I asked cautiously. I bit my lip. Either he was going to die, or I was. There had to be some way, some trick. I thought back to what Ms. Snowfox said, she was determined that we both could make it out. I wondered if she believed it.

“Y-yes,” Bruno stamped on his own foot, trying to crush it like a bug, “there, there’s some limit!”

“I’m sorry, Mina. Mom.” I whispered as I flew closer to him. I lowered until I was close enough to the ground, and stayed just out of his reach. I swallowed and circled wide around him. He took three steps toward me, then lunged and I danced back upward. He almost caught the bottom of my wing.

“Alice!” He yelped, “Brat!” I swung back down around him at a slightly further distance. Again, he took three steps and I used the fourth count to dart backward this time. He overcompensated, almost leaping upward like I’d moved before. “What are you doing?” He begged, “Just give up!”

He took three more steps, and I circled around him. He stopped, gasping and wheezing, “I don’t know if I can…” He screamed, biting his paw before he could lunge this time. I still darted away. I hovered for a moment, my heart racing and sweat dripping in front of my eyes like tears. The saltwater burned a little and made it slightly harder to see. I dipped downward this time, my chest brushing just against the ground as his claws narrowly scratched over my wings. The back of my dress nearly caught in his claw.

I stopped just under the flickering light. It flashed on, as a breath entered my lungs. It barely filled them. My wings felt weaker behind me. My strategy had been to tire him out. One… He stepped forward just as fast. Two… He wasn’t slowing at all. I waited for the third step before his lunge, bracing myself to dodge away.

He jumped forward early, skipping over the third step. I tried to dart away, but his paws clenched around me. “Finally!” He yelled. He held me up, blood dripping from his fangs. My arms were pinned to my sides, stealing any spells I could try to cast.

“Damn…” I exhaled slowly. I shut my eyes, his paws moved me.

I was pressed warmly against his fur, his heartbeat echoing through his chest. His voice quieted down, “You’re safe. You’re safe, I promise.”

“Bruno…” I breathed heavily, “You scared me.”

“I thought I lost control for a second,” the fur receded into his skin, his feathers brushing against me, “What were you doing?”

“I didn’t want to kill you.”

“You trusted me?”

“No,” I shook my head. I buried my face in his feathers as he held me in his wings. “Now, I can again.”

The footsteps came down the hall. Pippa slowed as she entered the room, her tail swishing behind her. Mina was flying over her shoulder, “Bianca told us to come this way…” She panted, “Did you see her also?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “I’ll tell you about it later.”

Mina flew toward Bruno, “You’re bleeding… You’re bleeding all over the place.” He just nodded.