Act 3, Chapter 93: The calamities that follow the disaster

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), around noon—11 hours into the time trial

Alexandra May

“Alexa,” Nickolas addressed me as soon as he and Alex appeared on the surface of my lake, “please tell me that she’s okay.” He held a big jar of what I assumed was his parents healing soup.

“I’ll gladly take that liquid out of your hands. It’s in the old oak-bark container, right?” I told him, as my spiders turned the armchair around to face him. My regrowing leg itched like hell. Fortunately, my Weatherlight self noticed and came over to scratch it for me.

Nick breathed out in one long exhale. “This is not what—” he started, then clenched his teeth and came over to Alex, pushing the jar into his surprised hands. “You know what? Fine. I will be an obnoxious friend overstaying my welcome, if you want me to be.” He breathed out again and closed his eyes, pointing a hand at me before clasping it into a fist. Shadowlight ran along the length of his arm and his skin briefly turned into shadowy bark before becoming skin again. “I assume that she’s okay, because you’d hopefully freak the fuck out if she wasn’t.”

“She’s wherever a person goes—I assume some form of soulspace—when they undergo a trial.” I replied, while Alex handed the jar to three minions spiders that would take it into a proper, colder storage.

“I assumed as much when Alex told me that she disappeared. Did she regain consciousness before she went in?”

“No,” I replied through the painted mouth. “She’s been equally unresponsive.”

He dropped onto the ground and leaned back on his arms, using them as supports, then looked into the corona of the Weaver’s Tree. “She’s not an artist. Is she?”

“Does she have to be?” I asked. “Peter is not water, and he has—”

“He is almost entirely water, if we are being precise,” he interrupted. “But I get your point. She fits the values required by your Domain, whatever those are.” He looked at me with a kind of disdain.

Alex laughed in response. “She is more artistic than both of you give her credit for,” he said, turning his head toward the tree as well, matching the point where Nickolas was looking. “She just expresses it in different forms than we do.”

“Her flowers and plants?” I asked.

“Yes. She knows exactly how to compose them and make them look like they’re just right for the occasion or the place.”

“I don’t see how that can work with the soulmarks I have, but I’m glad she’s been chosen,” I said, observing all those builder spiders march back to resume whatever they had been doing before.

“Maybe that’s not the reason at all,” Nickolas said. “The soul within cared deeply for the Sophie of her world. Maybe this is her attempt at saving her friend?”

“I was taken for a trial when I was on the verge of dying as well, so at least in that Ali is consistent. Fortunately for me, I woke up perfectly fine in that other realm, and I’m sure Sophie will be no different in that regard. Now we just have to wait for her return.”

Alex turned his head toward me, more out of a flair meant to underline the strangeness of the situation than any bodily necessity. “We have to answer that call,” he said. “You have to.”

“Call? What call?” Nickolas asked.

“My phone just rang on Earth. We are monitoring it. I’ll be back here shortly,” I replied to Nick, while Alex took me into his arms—one of which held the spellbook by the chained belt—and teleported us into my apartment’s bedroom. He grabbed the phone from Catansi’s paws, throwing the grimoire onto the bed. She had already swiped to answer and now he held it up to the mouth painted on my neck.

“Jess?” Natalie Weber’s voice asked from wherever she was. There was a note of concern hidden in her tone.

“That’s me,” I replied, playing the part. “What do I owe you calling me?”

“I heard about what happened and wanted to check up on you. I’m glad to hear your voice.”

“You mean my leg? That was weeks ago. I’m getting better,” I lied. “I’ll resume the service as soon as possible. Maybe next week,” I continued.

“Service? The leg?” she asked, pausing to gather her thoughts. “Oh... no, that’s not why I’m calling. Fuck, I forgot about that incident and you being out of the field. Too much stuff on my head. But that injury might have saved your life today. Fuck!” she swore with emphasis.

“You’re not making much sense. What’s going on?” I asked, looking into Alex’s eyes. He was just as flabbergasted as I was, which was to be expected. One of the brains tugged at the corner of the brain web, had just experienced an epiphany about how utterly ridiculous I must look to any bystander. From their perspective, I was essentially staring into a mirror and wondering why the face on the other side was staring back.

“There’s been... an attack on an unprecedented scale in New York, just minutes ago,” she replied.

Alex immediately shifted his attention to the screen of a laptop where Anansi, with her half-feline, half-human paws, was already scouring the internet for news. “All of our gates are inoperable. Most Hexblades agents are still unaccounted for, especially those who were on the other side. Many people are dead, and since I took a personal interest in you, I decided to call.”

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

Anansi however had already found a live news broadcast talking about terrorists detonating bombs across multiple locations in New York. As we spoke, I could hear sirens outside the apartment—police, ambulances, fire trucks. Maybe all three.

“Someone targeted everything we had in New York,” Natalie continued. “And I mean everything. They blew it to shreds with some kind of explosives. We’ve sent people to investigate and are calling everyone we know in the Guild in the Big Apple.”

“Who could even do something like that?” I asked. “Are we at war with anyone?”

Unlawfully taken from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Not any that we are playing in the open like that… that I know of. And what I meant by that is that we weren’t, up to this point. Apparently we are lagging behind the intentions and plans of our enemies and need to readjust.” She exhaled. “Fuck. I will be so fucking busy now, you can’t imagine.” I was pretty sure that I could, and that I was busier still even if my main body was behind with all the action, but when one has only one pair of hands and one head to steer them, there is only so much they can do. She couldn’t really be blamed for the restrictions of the flesh. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh fuck, I need to… fuck. To ease the tension,” she muttered.

I had an idea about who might be responsible for the attack and would probably be proven right or wrong pretty soon, but having the Guild go after Edge of Tomorrow right this moment would work against my plan of turning them against the Rhythm, so I needed to remain silent about it.

“Sorry to hear about all of that, Natalie. I’ll ask around and see what I can do to help.”

“Do that,” she answered absentmindedly. “I guess you don’t have any idea about what’s happening here?” she asked, as if latching onto my thoughts.

“Not a clue, sorry. Excuse me, but given the news, I’d like to make a few calls of my own right now.”

“True. Fuck! Sorry. Take care, Jess,” she replied, her chain of thought on full display. She immediately began talking to someone else, ending the call a few seconds later. Nothing I could decipher, unfortunately. She was probably already in crisis-management mode.

“Alex, send me to my Domain and call Caroline. Find out if she and Marek are alive.”

“Sure,” he replied, touched me, and I was back in the armchair in my private—well, not so much anymore—universe.

“What was that about? Where is Alex?” Nickolas asked.

“We have a slight problem on our hands that might be related to Sophie’s attempted assassination. Someone is killing mages en masse, so the manager of a company openly advertising itself as doing magic could have been targeted as well, although the methods are not the same.”

“Slower, please. What happened?” he asked and I recounted my brief conversation to him. By the time I finished, he was pacing back and forth, and I was glad that it was a lake we walked on and that it could not be worn down by his steps. “So you think it’s EoT?” He rejoined the conversation with another question.

Meanwhile, I was relieved to learn through Alex that Caroline was alive and well and was currently searching for Marek and the rest of her squad in the wreckage of the Guild’s main base of operations at Grand Central, where half of the city’s first responders were trying to contain the crisis. She’d been surprised to hear male’s voice but Alex played it off as me trying to alter my own.

“My first guess, but so far their main headquarters is operating as usual, and the same can be said about the points I have under surveillance. Alicia is unaccounted for, being Reality-knows-where.”

“It could also be the Concord between the shattered, vampires, and elves, right? They don’t like the Guild much either,” he asked.

That was when Maya flew by and stopped in the air to observe us. She nodded in greeting with a solemn expression, so unusual for her smaller frame.

“You had to jinx it, right?” I asked back, seeing that right after Alex put away the phone, Joan’s name appeared next on the display, already calling from their Earth-side base of operations.

“Fuck,” I managed to say, much to his confusion.

Alex appeared within a single breath, squeezed my shoulder, and took me back into the bedroom again, where we repeated the phone-holding maneuver.

“Joan?” I replied softly.

“Alexa, are you aware of what just happened minutes ago?”

“I was informed.”

“The tone of your voice suggests that you might know more than that. The gravity of the situation requires a meeting in person.”

I was sure they would prefer that. As far as I knew, it was the only way to influence me directly. I, however, could not go meet them in my own body, nor could I send Alex. Elle was occupied, Gertrude unaccounted for, Maya too small, and Miriam—my secret weapon—was, of course, a bad choice. Ever since her creation, she had been too important to expose unnecessarily.

I had split myself so many times and still it wasn’t enough, but making one final Persona for myself—my Jess Hare—seemed like a Herculean task. Something both out of my reach and unwise at the same time.

“I can’t do that.”

“This is of great importance to us. We insist.”

“If it is important, we’ll need to do it over the phone or through a proxy, because I really can’t be there in person. I’ve been badly injured and am unable to move on my own.”

“Phones are unsafe. What is the proxy you are speaking of?”

“I can instill small creatures with my power now. I can see, hear, and speak through them.”

“What creatures?”

“Paper birds, for example.”

“That’s acceptable. Send one to One World Trade, tenth floor. We will wait by the window so you can spot us. It will be open. Do it as quickly as possible.”

“Sure,” I replied, and they ended the call.

“They’re readying for war, aren’t they?” Alex asked. He reached into a drawer of my desk and retrieved a folded origami bird from inside. It was a cute pigeon that reminded me of my first attempts at making my magic work, when I had drawn a similar one on a piece of paper and asked it to fly.

“If they were to strike against the Guild, cleaning up after it had almost been wiped out would be the logical next step. Taking New York for themselves would make them a power, would it not?” Catansi spoke, her tail moving quickly from one side to the other.

“But if that’s their plan, we would know about it by now,” Alex thought out loud while drawing eyes on the belly of the bird.

“Not unless it’s urgent or was discussed above Joan’s head. Maybe they are still deciding,” I answered them.

“Another problem, Alexa.” Catansi turned to me with intensity in her feline eyes. She shook her elongated ears once, as if listening to something.

“Robbie. Fuck!” I said when the vision from one of the EoT facilities I had eyes on was brought to my attention by my Anima. “He’s making an appearance now too. How fucking convenient for the universe to throw it all at me at once.”

“He’s most likely responding to what happened. If he watched the news, he might quickly deduce that it was the Guild that got hit in all those locations. And if our assumptions are true, and EoT is behind the attack, then he might want to join them, come clean, or whatever,” Alex said while he moved on to sketching the mouth.

“You should go there and make sure that he is dead,” I addressed him. “If they can finish him as we planned, then that’s good. If not, you go forward with Operation Flying Carpet.”

“Sure.” He replied after a while, having finished the ear. He brought the bird into his hand, opened the window, and threw it out into the air outside, while the ribbons of shadowlight connecting him to his creation supplied it with the Authority necessary to function and serve as my senses as well. “I will be taking Maya with me,” he added after we both appeared in my Domain again.

“I want to go too,” Nickolas said, informed by my seer self about what was happening.

“That’s a bad idea, Nick,” Alex answered him with a pleading voice.

“You did not understand me. I want to go, but I won’t go. Whatever that feeling of revenge is making me do, it’s not wise for me to listen to it. I will stay here and wait for Soph. I feel like you should stay behind too.”

“I will,” I answered.

“Not all of you.” He crossed his arms and looked at me sitting in an armchair carried by paper spiders, his brows furrowed. Then his head turned to Maya hovering nearby and to Alex, still standing in front of him, and his expression eased. “You will never be in just one place anymore.”

“No, we won’t,” I replied, watching Liora dart from the forest wall toward us as well. He dropped the body of a Looneybunny onto the grass not far from the agora and joined us. “Doesn’t mean that Sophie doesn’t have my full attention, or that Robbie doesn’t, or any of the other things. It’s just that my full attention can be placed on many things now, Nick.”

“You won’t like it, but I am taking Mason with me, however,” Alex replied all of a sudden.

“Alex,” I stressed, disappointed but not surprised. He embodied my protective instincts and would act with them foremost in mind. He wanted to do right by Malik, if that was who he really was.

“Mason?” Nick asked, while Liora disappeared called by Elle, through the anchor painted on her lower back.

“Do it,” I addressed Alex, then turned to Nick. “Sit down. The world is apparently falling apart, but I have a mind to spare to tell you all about it.”