The World of Magic

Shailene sat next to the malformed, concrete mountain jutting from the sidewalk and idly fiddled with the hidden compartment in her boot. She’d been staring at the texts she received this morning for the past thirty minutes. She pulled her body—clad in a tight black jumpsuit and leather overcoat—inward, cradling her phone like a feeble bird in her lap.

The texts were from Kallum.

She hadn’t replied, pondering over what possible response she could give for last night, and now the sun was setting. Shadows born from the discarded wooden planks, jutting from deteriorating chain-linked fences, now threatened to consume this back street of LA.

“What you doin’?”

The deep voice found Shailene in a vulnerable moment, catching her unprofessionally off-guard. The man’s dark, middle-aged face was peering over her shoulder, trying to grasp what could make Shailene bundle over in agony.

“Checking the time.” Shailene said, standing up and brushing off nonexistent dust from her jumpsuit to feign newfound composure. The man—codename Yokohama—was nearly familial to Shailene, despite not knowing his real name. Yokohama was dressed in flexible, black clothes that tightly hugged his muscular frame but were considerably more decorative than Shailene’s. Silver buckle suspenders peaked under an Asian-themed leather jacket that matched the ornate dragon tattoo running up the left side of his face and under the circular, tainted glasses. For better or worse, she learned everything about fashion from Yokohama.

“You’re late, by the way,” Shailene said, trying to regain her professional composure.

“No way to talk to superiors, K.C.,” Yokohama said. K.C. standing for Kansas City, where Shailene completed her inaugural kill at age 14. They don’t get names before then.

“Promoted? When?” asked Shailene as she stuck her hands and phone into her jacket, leaning on one hip and watching the cars pass behind Yokohama in the vanishing sunlight.

“Nah,” Yokohama replied, pulling out a pack of Malboros and plucking out a cigarette with his black gloves. “You got demoted.”

He rolled the cylinder of tobacco between his fingers with a solemn expression before settling it between his white teeth. Shailene held her gaze behind him, completely unfazed, while he pulled out a silver lighter and sparked it near his mouth. The trail of embers rivaled the fading daylight.

“Failed your hit. D-class too.” Yokohama let out a dramatic puff of smoke. “Not like you.” He paused for a bit watching the smoke dissipate in the wind. Then, he fiddled with his jacket pocket.

“Lucky I doubled up, otherwise this job’d be done.” He pulled out two Guide Stones from his pocket. They needed two to track the current hit. “Real damage is leaving the two Es.” Yokohama said. “Not like you.”

“There’s an E-class?” Shailene asked, shocked by the news. D-class had always been reserved for the least threatening mages, not that it made them less deplorable creatures. Some of the most vile, like Dahmer, were Ds; they just tended to get caught. It seemed strange to consider Quinn as E-class though, considering his family name had come up in a briefing before.

“Is now. Ton of em too,” Yokohama said, pausing to inhale another cloud of tobacco before continuing. “Almost all faiths. Didn’t know magic existed till they seized up. Can’t even use it.” His voice started to trail off, “Most’ll be dead end of this month.”

The words hung like poison in the air. Shailene stared beyond the empty street, hoping to connect with any remaining emotional processes in her brain to adequately process the weight of Yokohama’s premonition.

“How many?” Shailene asked, failing to connect with her emotions. A chilling breeze flew by as the last rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon, though there were no trees to capture its motion; only piles of trash and Yokohama’s tight braids.

“U.S.? Ten thousand. Elsewhere, I dunno.” He took a deep pull of the cigarette, as if trying to reignite his frozen heart, though Shailene knew it was far too late for that—for both of them.

At least, so she thought.

“That bother you?” Yokohama asked, turning his dark, expressionless face towards her, gaze piercing through his overly tinted glasses.

Shailene found her neck rigidly locked downward, gripping the phone in her pocket with frightening strength. A surprising, yet predictable reaction. The answer was in the sender of those texts.

“I dunno.” Shailene shrugged off the stiff muscles and rolled her neck, surveying the duskly lit scene once more. Nearly two blocks deep off the main street, a nearly empty lot stood across from her, sprinkled with loose trash that managed to sail over the meager chain-linked fencing.

Eager to escape the interrogation and her feelings, Shailene bounded towards the empty lot with a steady speed. She lept off her left foot with considerable force, sinking her right foot deep into the bend of the fence, about half-way up. Holding the top firmly with both hands, Shailene converted the rebounding force, plus some, into upward momentum resulting in a clean somersault into the lot. Yokohama landed a second later.

The two calmly walked toward a discarded pair of trousers in the back of the lot. Delicately lifting the dirt caked leg, Yokohama slid out an innocuous black zip-bag. Inside, a stock iPhone and key for himself, and for Shailene: nothing. She frowned.

“Not much we can do,” Yokohama explained, noticing Shailene’s dissatisfaction. “Operation began last night. Multiple hits on A-class world-wide tonight. Resources are thin.”

“Not that,” Shailene said. She looked down at her boot resting atop the dead grass and wiggled it. “I have this, but I lost my revolver.” Her complete lack of shame in admission caught her wildly off-guard.

“Wanna run point?” Yokohama asked, disregarding Shailene’s humiliating confession. He was busy rapidly flinging through text and images on the burner phone.

“Yeah, of course.”

Yokohama reached into his leather coat and pulled out a 6-barrel revolver, then loosely tossed it over to Shailene without taking his eyes off the phone. She caught it with ease, paying no mind to the safety being off; it didn’t matter. If a mistake happened, it meant you didn’t belong in this field of work. Pocketing it opposite of her phone, the two acrobatically crossed back over the fence and briefed on the way to their destination.

The hit was a C-class mage. Type: Faith. Ability: 5-second precognition. The target was his son, A-class with 15-minute precognition. The goal was to extract with the Guide Stone and detain him under MNA watch, then barter with the stone to work for the MNA. Other information on the target was sparse. A lesser agent—rather anyone other than Shailene—would be uncomfortable with that. Faith types drastically varied in their manifested ability compared to Biomancers or Artisans. So much so, that there’s barely a unifying feature other than their delusions. But Shailene knew mages. That’s all she needed to know because they all worked the same.

They approached their destination: an abandoned butcher warehouse. The run-down building was slightly meager as far as warehouses go, but it was impressive among the caved-in single-story huts and empty lots around. Black tarps and sheets covered the windows, hiding the light, if any, inside the building.

The plan was straightforward. Shailene would distract the C-class while Yokohama extracts the A-class separately. All of this predicated on the mage keeping his son in a confinement room, but given the set of abilities, it was over 100% certainty.

The sun had long since fallen below the low, dilapidated L.A. skyline, and in this particular area of the city, the air sat abruptly still. Ball-to-heel, Shailene and Yokohama walked perfectly in step across the dying, littered lawn so as not to double their chance of being overheard. Stopping around halfway along the side of the warehouse, Shailene led the charge and pushed slightly through the black tarped window.

The interior was dimly lit with a profoundly musty odor. Despite the dilapidating structure, the contents of the building were well maintained; typical of Faiths. The window opened to a straight hall with a refurbished wooden door left slightly ajar on the left and a series of industrial windows spanning the entire right side.

Behind those windows, a room vaguely resembling a slaughterhouse kitchen was repurposed with intricate mechanical contraptions that had no apparent purpose. Then behind yet another set of industrial windows, a blurry outline of a boy slumped against a sterile wall.

Shailene signaled she was entering and pushed through a tiny hole in the window, diving through and rolling across the floor deliberately trying to widen the time and area of impact, diffusing any noise. Naturally, she did not make a sound.

However, she caught a distant voice just barely pushing past the door and into Shailene’s ear. “Intruders,” it said.

As Shailene now expected, Yokohama was not as delicate as her and landed perpendicular with his dive-roll. Fortunately, the objective was already located on the right. Shailene readied the revolver in her right hand as Yokohama dashed down and around the hallway to his objective. She was on her own now.

Through the door, an all-consuming blackness enveloped Shailene, but the gentle edges of light from the hallway gave her enough sight to grasp the context of the room. The steel shelves lined with canned food were bolted to the dilapidating wall immediately next to her. The customer space of a meat grocery. Not so subtle footsteps bounced across the room. Shailene couldn’t place a solid read on the distance, but it was a slow gait, maybe thirty paces from reaching her.

Closing her eyes and fully submitting to the darkness, Shailene’s ears trained the gun on the mage’s location. After a calculated second, the steps halted. Scuffs and clattering followed, giving her the impression that the mage took cover.

“God! It’s not him you pussy,” said a gruff voice. Shailene kept her arm, trained in the exact spot for another five calculated seconds before letting loose an ear shattering gunshot that bounced off the echoey metal walls.

“Ahh!” a meeker voice screamed. “We should hide, maybe it’s—”

The voice was cut off by a silence heard even through the ringing in Shailene’s ears, a small cost for the pay-off. She now had a full model of the mage’s mind, with only a few creases left to iron out. Issues so minute, they could be solved through dialogue. Shailene formulated a distinct question regarding the mage’s Guide Stone in her mind, then promised to imprison it for the next five seconds.

“I’m not handing it over,” the bodiless voice called out from the darkness, responding to the question imprisoned in Shailene’s mind. Now, she decided to keep the thought locked away forever, never to leave her lips. That answered crease one.

Shailene let her mind empty for a second, stalling her mental processes before internalizing the words given to her though. She decided to play the part of a fool. A stupid, silly girl that knows nothing of the magical world. The moment she began formulating a vague notion of what to say, the mage cut her off. Crease two.

“Then why are you here? What do you want?” The darkness questions.

Right then, Shailene’s mind twitched and her lips moved on her own, “I wanna know what it was like. To touch one.” There was no care put into the crafting of those words. It was a mental reaction, pure and simple, to the words the mage uttered. And they were not cut short. The final crease.

The mission was now completed. Shailene knew exactly how to kill the Faith and rid the world of this deluded mind. She did not know when, and she did not know what it would be, but the mage, himself, would trigger his own death. Now, it was a waiting game.

“You won’t so much as see my Guide Stone, much less touch it. Now leave,” the darkness called, footsteps slowly getting further away. She needed him close. A primal part of the brain took over, allowing Shailene the capacity to plead the mage for help.

“Please, I just need to know! I lost my boyfriend to it and—”

“Shut up you idiot, she’s lying,” the bodiless voice howled. Stomping footsteps grew louder. “Ahh! We need to hide, he killed—” a meek voice shouted whilst the mage approached her. Repositioning slightly to cover the windows behind her, Shailene stood firm as the mage stepped from the black abyss and into the dim scraps of the hallway light.

“How did you find this place,” the man snarled. Yellow teeth captured most of the light, but sharp, jagged facial features—characterized by malnourishment—stuck out even in suffocating darkness.

After a heavy silence—Shailene honestly lacking a response—the man stepped closer, revealing a destitute head of hair, save for a few wisps. His beady eyes were jittery, though not from fear. Even though Shailene had a gun, he would see it coming; dangerous as a wet noodle.

“Leave. Now.” The ragged mage snarled yet again, almost within reaching distance of Shailene.

Questions concerning the worth of a mage who lets intruders stumble around their laboratories and muddying their research bubbled to the surface of Shailene’s brain. It was time to spring the trap. The uniform trait among all the deplorables that Shailene sank her teeth into. A zealous pride for their magical research.

Before the words bubbled into her brain, the man snapped, throwing Shailene into the wall with his surprisingly modest weight. Her wrist caught the edge of a steel shelf, causing the revolver to clatter on the floor. Clasping Shailene’s neck, he leaned his forearm into her shoulder pinning her here. He calmly stared into her eyes, while she kept her body limp and helpless. This wasn’t the trigger.

“What do you know about my research,” he spat. Then, his eyes lingered down to the chest, growing wide and still as if he discovered a hidden prize. Malicious eyes caked with a disgustingly selfish hope trained on her stomach. Without question, Shailene understood what was operating under the mage’s simple mind. He’d just realized she was of child-bearing age and his last research project had been a failure. Their infiltration wouldn’t have worked otherwise. His son would have warned him of what unfolded.

A touch grazed Shailene’s hip and her mind went white. That was the trigger.

Instantly, Shailene slipped from the grip and tumbled to the right, snagging the mage’s neck with her left leg as he tumbled opposite. Muscles stiff, she yanked him along, constricting his neck the moment her back hit the ground. Caught in a tight headlock between her legs, Shailene freely grabbed the fallen revolver and after a careful count, shot the space her prisoner once stood.

What followed was the harrowing death throes of a man watching the end of life approach, one second at a time. Calm, without emotion, the icey barrel of the gun rested its lips on the back of the neck, pressed against the brain stem. Then, a vomit of blood, flesh, and brain matter exploded onto her lap. Irritated, Shailene reached past the corpse and pulled out the pocket revolver hidden in her boot; she didn’t even need it.

“Worthless,” Shailene spat, now turning her attention elsewhere. Unfazed by the blood splatter and fleshy bits, she left the abyssal room and returned to the hallway. Yokohama was still visible behind the two layers of windows; strange. She jogged down the hallway, around and into the room with inexplicable contraptions with transparent tubes and chutes, turning again into the sterile containment room where Yokohama stood.

Past the metallic latch that resembled a safe more than a door, the contraptions became abundantly clear. A pale, thin boy—barely describable as living—leaned against a wall, chains on one wrist and IV drip in the other. The hollow look in his eyes could be traced back to the contraption, perfectly centered in the singular viewport out of this prison. It was an impossibly complex Rube Goldberg machine. One designed to last 15 minutes long.

“Quick work,” Yokohama said casually.

“Couldn’t tell between present and future,” Shailene replied. “Didn’t even need to use this,” waving the pocket revolver in her right hand then nodded toward the apprehended child.

Yokohama who shook his head.

“Won’t move. Even took its stone,” he said. Slowly walking over to Shailene. Her eyes were glued to the boy's head. His hair was white. “Got no free will. It’s the real deal though. Knows what’s gonna happen. Still won’t move.”

The vagueness wasn’t lost on Shailene. This was a command from her now superior. She raised her pocket revolver at the boy, ready to shoot. It’d been done many times before, to children younger than him. Yet, this time, she had to prepare herself to pull the trigger; a breath to wipe away the surfacing images of Kallum. It would only take a second.

But that was already too long.

Ears pounding, Shailene’s brain jostled in her skull, pounding it into her mind that the bloody, lifeless child was not Kallum. Her stiff arm slacked, and her left hand groped for the revolver that was now in Yokohama’s outstretched hand. An unbelievable force of shame choked Shailene’s conscious mind. It was over. She couldn’t bounce back after that.

“Gonna have to report that.” Yokohama said calmly. It would be more than a demotion. Two infractions in under twenty-four hours. This one with a partner. You don’t hesitate in the field, no excuses. That’s how you get killed. That’s how you get your team killed.

In a foggy haze, Shailene trailed Yokohama through the warehouse and out onto the street. She couldn’t say exactly how they left the building, if it was through the front or the way they came. All that existed were the last twenty-four hours airing in her head like a horror movie. Scene-by-scene her life dissolving away. Same as the mage earlier.

“It was a mercy, really,” Yokohama said. “If that helps.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the kid,” Shailene snapped back. Even the piercing cold gust through the street couldn’t ice her temper. The rhythmic tapping of her boots launched into double-time. She wanted to be alone, scream till her lungs gave out, and tear a pillow in half. She wanted to go home.

“I know.”

The voice tugged Shailene’s heart back, slowing her pace back to match her partner. It was—by relative standards—extremely soft. A tone last heard four years ago.

“You should know,” Yokohama said, “Volyaska twins are in L.A.”

“Since when?”

“Six months ago. Same time we caught wind of this.” Yokohama emphatically jostled the now four Guide Stones in his hand. “They’re up to something, and I don’t like it K.C.”

Shailene nodded. She didn’t dare ask how he knew this. S-class were too dangerous for field ops to have info on, even for elites like Yokohama and formerly Shailene. Unplanned encounters were a code-red situation. Immediately retreat on contact, any survivors would be a blessing. Like Shailene.

“Gonna check it out,” Yokohama said. “Called Salem and Chi’ for support.”

Shailene ground to a halt and Yokohama stopped a few paces ahead, pulling out a cigarette. She understood keeping her out of it, especially given today’s blunder, but calling Chicago? She’d left Kallum only to fall into someone else’s hands. The way her life continued to whimsically crumble away was somewhat comical.

“You know how she is about typing up loose ends,” Yokohama said, driving the serrated dagger deeper, “that’s why…”

Instead of using words, his actions spoke instead. The key from the baggie earlier soared in the air. Shailene caught it reflexively. She blankly stared at him taking a long drag.

“Toss your phone too.” Yokohama exhaled and stepped toward Shailene, pulling a phone from his back pocket—different from the burner he’d been using. “Tracked. How we knew you dodged the Es. I keep telling you, use a Goddamn burner.”

Struggling to comprehend the obvious situation, Shailene staggered slightly atop the shattered sidewalk and tucked her hair behind the ear the way Kallum joked was her nervous tick. Yokohama nodded his hand, reminding her to take the phone.

“Austin and Sea’ set it up good. Has every contact you’ll need. Bug free. Even got a local stone tracker they rigged through backdoor access. Smart kids.”

“I—I just…” Shailene’s lips were quivering.

Yokohama opened the contacts on the phone, trembling in Shailene’s shaky hands. Before her, the screen displayed a name that mattered more than anything else. “You wanna protect him right?”

This was the third time.

The first time was four years ago. It burst forth like a geyser from an unfathomably deep well of grief that she would try to bury along with the ashes of her fallen comrades on that infernal day.

The second time was two months later, when a stupid boy she’d barely met caught her alone on a mournful night and dared to ask her if she was okay, grabbing onto a feeling she wasn’t even aware of.

Now, for the third time in her life, Shailene was crying. She knew the cost—war against both sides, mage and MNA. They knew the cost too, and they pushed her to do what she’d been afraid to do till now: give Kallum the truth.

“You’re the last survivor that can feel. Maybe last person in the MNA. So…” Yokohama trailed off now reaching the cheesy end of his monologue.

But, Shailene didn’t care, flinging her arms around the awkwardly rigid middle-age man that didn’t know how to react to emotions. He was wrong. Their cold interiors still had a bit of warmth inside, just too hard-headed to realize it. Only, they never had Kallum pry that realization into them. So she had to keep him alive long enough to break their rigid shells someday.

“Um.. K.C… The key—”

“Safehouse right?” Shailene responded, pulling away from Yokohama and composing herself, professionally. “Which one?”

“SW3.” Yokohama said. “No one should check. Compromised, but you know that. I’ll keep you updated though.” Silently, he turned around and trailed down the beaten sidewalk through the rows of ruined fencing towards the main street just two blocks away. That was goodbye for them.

Shailene followed Yokohama’s direction but there was no awkwardness. They were now separate people in different worlds, perhaps forever, so Shailene did Shailene things and picked up the courage to call Kallum at last.

The phone rang five times before he picked up. Slightly annoying.

Hello?

“Kallum? It’s me,” Shailene said, feeling the corners of her mouth turning upward in defiance of the cold, gloomy environment around her. Though for a second, her elation was threatened by the fear that Kallum didn’t recognize her voice.

Oh, Shailene? Where are you calling from?

A little bit of background noise floated through the speaker, mostly filled with the word bitch, but Shailene paid no mind; happy to talk with Kallum.

“I broke my phone, so I got a new one.”

There was an awkward pause. Shailene’s short-sighted bravery had only taken her thus far. She hadn’t thought about what to say to him about it all. While mulling about in her head, Shailene suddenly found herself on the main street, Yokohama no longer in sight.

“Um, so Kallum. There’s something I wanna say.”

Yeah? What’s up?

He seemed to be preoccupied. Not fully paying attention to what Shailene was saying. That irritated her. A lot.

“I have a secret that I need to tell you,” she emphasized.

Oh?

Again, there was a bit of a pause due to a bit of irritation on Shailene’s part. A car whizzed by, blowing up a gust of rotting leaves.

Then a gunshot, through the phone.

“Kallum!” Shailene screamed. “Kallum, where are you?”

At my place. Shit, gotta go. Tell me when you get here.

The call ended.

Echos of police sirens cried through the streets. An anthem of the Los Angeles night. On another day, Shailene would pay it no mind, but tonight she was painfully aware of its presence. Last night, a war had begun and the stupid boy was ignorantly sitting on the opposite side.