The next group was surrounded by aspects of memory and measurement. Each of those smaller machines sat on top of a machine from the first group. The pairs of machines were connected by thin plates of scripted copper held in place with small silver rivets. These had to be recording devices that stored information from the listening machines. My natural curiosity urged me to figure out how they worked and, more importantly, what secrets they held.
As much fun as it would’ve been to experiment with Hagar’s spy gear, I fought the impulse. I didn’t want to disrupt whatever work she was doing. It would be just my luck that I’d stop one of the recording machines right when it was about to store important information stolen from the heretics.
The third group of machines formed a triangle around the room’s perimeter. Those held aspects of transformation, movement, and concealment in intimidating numbers. The machines were heavy with sacred energy, and they emitted popping noises at irregular intervals. They weren’t connected to any of the other machines, and the immense power they held made me wary of getting too close to them until I understood what they did. They could have been traps, for all I knew, set to ward off intruders.
Which, technically, is what I was.
It was the last group of machines that held the most promise. They were smaller than the others, their auras stuffed with sound, light, movement, distance, and focus aspects. Complicated dials and meters, none of which made any sense to me, covered their faces. What I did recognize, though, were square green buttons with the word TRANSMIT printed across them in thick block letters.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said quietly. Hagar had been my only contact with the elders for as long as she’d been my handler. Maybe these machines were how she did it.
I rubbed my hands together, reached out, and pressed the green button on the nearest machine.
“Hello?” I asked. “Is anyone there?”
I released the button and waited for an answer.
Nothing happened for a long stretch of seconds, and then a blurry red orb appeared above the machine. Garbled sounds filled the air in explosive bursts of nonsensical noise that were so loud I covered my ears with my palms and instinctively ducked my head away from them. The red ball above the device shimmered in time with the sounds, its outline pulsing and wavering until it finally snapped into place and a clean, clear voice broke through the chaotic sounds.
“Jace?” Hagar’s voice was nearly a shout. “What are you doing?”
“Something’s happened,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“Bring him through,” Sanrin snapped. “He’s right. It’s time for us to talk.”
“I’m ready when you are,” I said to the air. That was a lie, because I was suddenly nervous about my decision to track down Hagar and the elders. There was a dark undercurrent in Sanrin’s voice that made me wonder what I’d interrupted.
“It’s your funeral,” Hagar said. “Stand still. I don’t want to cut you in half with the portal.”
Those weren’t the comforting words I was looking for. I still had the occasional nightmare about the Lost that Abi had sliced up with a portal in Kyoto.
A dark hole opened in the air behind me a split second later. Its edges wriggled with tendrils of sacred energy that moved with the slow, languid motions of seaweed deep beneath the ocean’s surface. Hagar waved at me from the other side of the portal, her eyes wide, dark smudges smeared across her cheeks.
“Get in here. I can’t keep this open for much longer,” she said.
It was hard to make out Hagar’s surroundings. The walls were damp stone that reflected patches of milky light. The portal cut off my view of the ceiling, though it did show me a dirt floor pockmarked by oily puddles of what might’ve been water. It didn’t look very inviting.
I jumped through the portal, anyway.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Hagar’s fingers danced across a web of red light that hung in the air before her. It vanished, and the portal snapped closed with an electric hiss at the same time.
“With everyone else,” Hagar said.
I snorted. “That’s specific.”
“Best not to ask questions,” Sanrin said as he emerged from the shadows with Claude beside him. “I’d take you someplace more comfortable for this meeting, but none of our usual haunts is available just now. I can get you coffee, though.”
Hagar opened her mouth to say something, and I interrupted her with my order.
“Yes, please. Black is fine.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when the ground shook beneath our feet and the dots of green light in the ceiling swayed drunkenly. “What was that?”
“Again, best not to ask,” Sanrin said. He tilted his head toward the room’s only exit and led the way out.
The passage we followed was long and narrow, the walls unfinished dirt that left smudges on our exposed skin and robes. More of the green orbs provided light from the ceiling, and the harsh illumination changed familiar colors into alien reflections. Hagar’s brilliant red hair was as black as coal and glistened with an unwholesome sheen. Under the emerald light, it was impossible to tell whether she was merely her usual pale self or sick.
We finally left the tunnel for a room that might’ve been cozy if the furniture didn’t consist of packing crates and empty cable spools. Hirani raised a carafe of coffee toward us and offered a wisp of a smile. While everyone looked ragged and rough around the edges, she seemed to have suffered much more than the others. Her eyes were sunken into deep pits, and the bags under them were darker than bruises.
“What is going on?” I blurted out.
“War,” Hirani said with a sad shrug. She poured coffee into the chipped mugs that rested on the cable spool next to her, and her hand shook so badly she splashed it everywhere.
