The Protection of Ren Crown (60 page)

“A lovely backdrop for a massacre.” A booming voice burst through the audio enchantment, and the sharp features of Vincent Godfrey appeared in our hologram as he strode dramatically across one of the battle fields with his arms outstretched in the open air. “Look at this view. Almost as magnificent as it used to be in the Third. Let's return some of this beautiful magic back where it belongs.”

“Dear Magic,” Will whispered, horror in his voice. It was a sentiment repeated verbally by at least three others. The voices coming through Justice Toad suddenly changed from condemnation to terror—people trapped in the stands were likely relaying via frequency that
Vincent Godfrey
was on campus and walking toward them.

Vincent Godfrey—the man responsible for the carnage in Sassraf, and the man who had appeared in the hijacked feed and demanded that the Second Layer concede. Here was definitive proof that this was an attack. But not by the Department—by Third Layer terrorists.

I frantically checked my wrist and the other places where gold glowed—but the color was not pulsing any more brightly than it had earlier in the day, which meant Raphael hadn't suddenly appeared. Terrorists in the top ten must work alone. I let out a strangled noise of relief and Delia looked at me as if I'd lost my mind.

In the hologram, Godfrey gazed into the dome encasing the stands. He smiled and gave a little wave. The campus news feed had reported that ten thousand students were expected to watch the first day of competition live at the battle fields. Ten
thousand
students.

“Communications up
now
,” Godfrey said to one of the five minions behind him. His gaze narrowed on the students trapped inside the dome. “And why are they speaking in there like that? Shut down all internal campus transmissions immediately, you
idiot.
”

“Isaiah!” I shouted over the yelling from my tablet. “Make Telgent t—”

Abruptly, Justice Toad went silent and nearly everyone around me grabbed their ears and throats.

“—talk,” I finished loudly into the silence.

The hologram of Godfrey wavered. The scarf tightened around my neck, and my right knee buckled in surprise as magic was yanked out of me in order to keep the communication of the scarves active and alive.

Most of our assembled group looked at Olivia in surprise as the hologram continued to show the six terrorists in live motion. They slowly removed their hands from the physical points hit by their broken frequencies—looking for an explanation as to why the hologram and scarves were still active when all other communications were not.

“Price, you actually did it?” Dagfinn asked, impressed. “You carved out a block of magic separate from the school's communications?”

“Magic has been made available, yes. Track his channel, Dagfinn,” Olivia said tightly, gesturing abruptly to the hologram.

Dagfinn nodded, smiling, and initiated the magic. I startled again under the pull.

My movement did not go unnoticed this time.

“Price?
Dear Magic, Price
.” Dagfinn was staring at me in horror, along with the others around him. “The block of magic... Did you hook our communications into her?” Dagfinn whispered oddly.

“
Track the channel, Dagfinn
,” Olivia said furiously. Her fierce, angry gaze bored into me before switching back to Dagfinn's group. “We don't have time to
discuss.
”

It was the argument I had used when I'd initiated the leech, and Olivia meant the angry barb for me. She hadn't liked this modified part of the plan at all.

A more aggressive pull began as Dagfinn did exactly what was asked of him. I wasn't surprised this time, and I forced myself to relax and not reflexively grab the streams of magic slipping away from me. If I stopped the magic, we might not get it restarted.

When Dagfinn, a twenty-one-year old communications mage, frequency hacker, and steady delinquent, had suggested hooking the scarves into a separate power source so that we'd be out from under control of “the man,” it had been obvious even at the time that he had been thinking of some sort of hijacked space in the mountain.

We hadn't had time to configure that, so I'd hooked the metaphorical jack up to me with help from Will. With my complete consent offered to the magic and our practical leech experience, it had been ridiculously easy.

The Frequency Grid was powered by magic the government allocated for communication. Anyone trying to shut down communications would, without question, take it down first. I didn't have a frequency like nearly every other student did. I was an island. I was the perfect battery.

“They are opening eight channels. Trying to piggyback now to see if we can get a signal through with theirs, then I'll hold a channel open for us, in three,” Dagfinn said, holding up three shaky fingers. He, and everyone around him, kept shooting anxious glances at me. “Two, one,
got it
.”

Much of the pull on me lessened as Dagfinn opened a small channel beneath one used by the terrorists. I took a deeper breath.

In the hologram, Godfrey smirked at the men and women lining up in front of him. “This is going to be a day for the books, folks. Let's make the Baileys' print run red.”

Even from here, I could
feel
the dome encasing the students. I could feel it inside of me—hollowness, like a watermelon scraped of its fruit. The dome was made from Origin Magic, but tainted and fouled by ill purpose. I looked at the Administration Building—which we could see partially through the trees that surrounded the swamp. Different dome, with a different purpose, yet there were streaks of illness in there as well. Jagged edges that could detonate if not handled correctly.

Delia cursed and pressed her lips together as the holographic view zoomed outward. “Where did they all
come
from?”

There weren't just six terrorists. At least a hundred battle hardened men and women had stepped into the frame of the projection.

“A perimeter ward was breached,” I said. I looked at the men and women in front of Godfrey. “There are probably even more of them beyond the image's range.”

“We need a body count, Asafa,” Olivia said. “We need to know...”

We needed to know what? I could hear the question echoed in the silence of the others. These were men and women who had been successfully terrorizing the entire Layer and its military forces for months. We needed to know how many we were going to...
fight
?

“In order to do what? We are not combat mages. We are not soldiers. We need to
hide
,
now
,” Bryant said. A few other faces looked like they agreed.

“Tracking the foreign signatures on campus, Olivia,” Saf said, his voice strong and certain. He, Trick, Will, and two guys from Epsilon were running the spells with Dagfinn. “And initiating character location and scenario mapping.”

There was a small tap in my scarf, then a dot popped up on the hologram of the mountain that Saf was stretching between his hands. Sixteen other dots appeared around mine—registering each connected scarf—and an equal amount were grouped together in Dorm Five. It was just like one of Saf and Trick's games—except the mountain was the setting and we were the game's protagonists armed only with full life bars.

“Frey, you can't tell me you are going along with this change of plan, this war game, this utter tripe?” Bryant addressed Asafa incredulously. When Saf didn't answer, Bryant turned to Olivia and pointed sharply at her. “We are not soldiers, Price.
I
am not a soldier.”

“Do you see who that is, Bryant?” Olivia jabbed a finger at the first hologram where Godfrey was smirking and strutting outside the domed battle field stands. “They will kill
all
of us. They will kill everyone in the stands at the battle field, probably as soon as they gather their
audience.
As soon as those eight channels are answered, that dome will house the burial ground for ten thousand trapped
ducks.
You are either an asset or a liability to us,” Olivia said, locking gazes with him. “Which one is it going to be?”

“That so?” Bryant looked both incredulous and angry. “You going to take me out if I'm not in on your absurd little war game?”

Olivia's gaze was uncompromising. “I wouldn't waste my energy or time.”

“What the hell.
You?
Going to save campus?” Bryant laughed. “I was all for this stupid plan when we were talking about creating havoc and screwing with people, but fighting? Putting our necks on the line? What's in this for Olivia Price?”

Olivia's gaze unwittingly slid my way for a moment.

But Bryant was looking through the trees, over the grassy central circle, to the Administration Building. He gave an unpleasant laugh. “You got war bonds or political plots riding on this? Mommy set you up to make us martyrs?”

“You are released from your commitment, Bryant. Leave your scarf. Go hide.” Olivia turned to Dagfinn's group, turning her back on Bryant and hiding her expression. But the magical and emotional feedback from her was overwhelming—violence, drowning sorrow, rage, love, determination.

“Oh, you can bet I'm going. Those already trapped are as good as dead anyway.
You
are the idiots who are going to die with them.” Bryant dropped his scarf and made a rude gesture at Olivia, then swept it across the air to encompass the rest of us before disappearing into the foliage surrounding the swamp.

“Anyone else?” Olivia asked. Silence greeted her.

Delia's gaze was fixed on Olivia. A few moments later Bryant's scarf flew through the air and landed in her hand.

Neph put a hand on Olivia's arm. Silent communication passed between them—I didn't know whether they were not including everyone else, or not including me specifically. The communication magic in the scarves was based on Frequency design, and the intent of the speaker directed the message to an individual, three people, a select team, the whole group—or everyone except for one person.

A moment later, Neph ran toward the nearest flagpole.

“A perimeter ward was breached on the Eighteenth Circle for five minutes,” Saf said, manipulating the section of air filled with code, maps, and the magic that they were all working with—normal magic, not magic drawn from me. “It was closed again—the magic changed and reinforced—but we might be able to break through.”

Olivia nodded briskly. “The combat mages and the Department will be looking for any entry point onto campus.”

At the base of the mountain, far below the student levels, we could see flashes of fire and color. People fighting.

“The campus ports and mage-made travel options are closed. It will take fifteen minutes to get to the Eighteenth Circle through the natural travel systems,” Lifen said, pointing at the Blarjack Swamp, a natural port that didn't rely on Administrative Magic. “And that doesn't take into account how long traversing the Midlands will take or the fact that the enemy is on the Seventeenth Circle, and likely guarding the hole they created, even if it's patched.”

Hundreds of yards away, Neph was doing complicated magic around the flagpoles. The magic flowed in a current from one flagpole to the next.

“I'll check the perimeter ward,” I said, already moving.

Olivia grabbed my arm. “No. Lifen's right. There are undoubtedly guards positioned there. And we need you elsewhere.” Her mouth pinched unhappily.

Everyone looked uneasily between us. I couldn't even imagine what they were thinking—no blips of emotion were coming through the scarves. Everyone except for me was a frequency user already, and they had adapted to using the scarf communication properties quickly and easily.

“I'll be fast. Someone has to check the ward who knows it,” I said.

“I'll do it,” a new, but familiar voice said.

Everyone spun to see Constantine casually leaning with his back against a tree at the edge of the swamp.

“What are you doing here?” Olivia demanded. Then her gaze swung to me. “No, I know what he is doing here.”

I held up a hand in apology. “He is helpful?”

“Are you insane?” she hissed.

Constantine smiled. “I'll do it, Price. Unless you want to send Crown while you continue to drain her?”

Olivia smiled thinly, which meant she was
livid.
She hadn't liked it when I'd insisted on hooking the communication spells of the scarves into my magic, but Olivia didn't waste resources, and she well knew I could function at far lower energy levels than this. Dagfinn's open channel was taking most of the load now, too, which was far better than expected.

At least
something
was exceeding expectations. Because for all of the stress relief and fun Plan Fifty-two had become, we had not prepared for an
incursion
—especially not one that would rely solely upon us to solve.

I had been worried about monsters, yes. Anxious about keeping campus safe, most definitely. Actual emotional preparation for a
military assault
of campus with no combat mages, no teachers, no Troop, and no backup? No.
Not even close.

We had been far more certain that a creature rampaging the grounds
or some diabolical magic getting out of control would be our problem. And we hadn't planned for what exactly a Red Alert would mean.

Olivia had implemented Plan Fifty-two in order to manage my stress level—this had never been a war strategy.

Constantine didn't wait for Olivia to respond. “Give me the extra scarf. I'll check the perimeter ward on the Eighteenth Circle immediately and try to reopen the breach. On my magic, I so do vow.”

For a moment the only sound was of the Blarjack swimming around the swamp—waiting for one of us to jump in so it could catch a meaty two-legged meal. Everyone stared, dumbfounded, at Constantine as the Contract Magic, still perfectly in effect as natural magic, settled around his shoulders and bound him to the promise.

“Fine. Give him the scarf, Delia,” Olivia said. “Perhaps the enemy will save us the trouble and take care of Leandred permanently.”

Constantine's expression didn't change, but something satisfied settled in the connection I could feel to him. He took the scarf from Delia, then strode to the edge of the swamp.