Chương 6: Chapter 5 - It’s just luggage

The administrative building was somehow even more depressing than the warehouse. Same fluorescent lights. Same plastic chairs. Same bored officials who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. The only difference was the paperwork, which had multiplied exponentially overnight. I walked in at seven-fifty and counted heads. Five people, including myself. That was fewer than I expected. Ten had passed the tryouts. Manuel sat in a plastic chair near the entrance, not filling out forms.

He had his phone pressed to his ear, his leg bouncing with nervous energy.

"Come on, come on," he muttered.

"Pick up." Kara stood nearby, arms crossed, watching him with a flat expression. Torres was at one of the tables, already working through his stack of paperwork. Liam sat at another table, pen moving with mechanical precision. No Nadia. I approached Manuel.

"Problems?" He looked up, startled, then refocused on his phone.

"Nadia's not here. She's not answering. I got one text like twenty minutes ago that just said 'boyfriend trouble, might be late.'" He held up the phone so I could see the message.

"Then nothing."

"Maybe she's just running late."

"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced.

"But she was really excited about this yesterday. She wouldn't just blow it off." Kara walked over.

"Do you have her address?"

"I do, yeah, we exchanged info after the tryouts. She's in Queens, though. That's like two hours from here."

"Hour and a half if you drive fast," Kara said. She looked at me.

"You have a car? My friend took me here." They all saw me arrive in one. If Nadia missed the paperwork deadline, she might lose her spot. If her boyfriend was causing problems serious enough that she couldn't even text back, then she probably actually needed help.

"We can go check on her. We'll be back by noon if we go now, enough time to handle the paperwork today." Manuel blinked.

"Wait, seriously?" I shrugged.

"Worst case, we make a useless trip. It's not like we've got anything fun to do today." He scrambled to his feet. Kara was already heading for the door. Torres looked up from his paperwork as we passed.

"Everything okay?"

"Nadia might be in trouble," Manuel said.

"We're going to check on her." Torres glanced at the clock on the wall, then at the officials behind the desk.

"You've got until seventeen hundred to submit paperwork. Don't be late."

"We won't," I said. We left the building, and I led them to my car.

"Well," Manuel said, eyes sparking up.

"I've always wanted to see what mages hide in their cars." I rolled my eyes.

"You're in for a shock. And you sit in the back then." I got behind the wheel, Kara next to me, and Manuel tried to push the glaive suitcase to make space on the back seats.

"The heck is this?" he asked. I leaned between the seats, and moved it a bit, so he had some space. It thudded on the floor as it tilted.

"You should have enough space now."

"That's not an answer. This thing is way over a hundred pounds." He got in though, and managed to close the door. Like two fifty, yeah. I started the car, put it in gear, and pulled out. Manuel examined the case.

"Why does a suitcase have a high-tier electronic lock?" I got on the road, and started speeding up.

"Mage stuff."

"Like, seriously, what's in this?"

"My magic wand."

"Why is it so heavy? And so locked up?" I rolled my eyes, and just kept driving. Kara gave me the side eye, but I ignored her too. We didn't know each other that well. Or at least not well enough to discuss how Hephaestus had forged me a glaive out of the alloy from a Mayan guardian statue a few thousand years older than either of them. The drive to Queens took an hour and forty minutes because of traffic on the turnpike.

Manuel sat leaning forward between the two front seats, giving directions from his phone and trying Nadia's number every few minutes. Kara sat in silence, staring out the window.

"Left on this street," Manuel said.

"Should be the third building on the right." The building was a brick apartment building, five stories, the kind of place that had probably been nice in the seventies. A man stood on the front steps, arguing with someone through the intercom. Tall, athletic build, wearing a leather jacket that probably cost more than it looked like.

"That's gotta be him," Manuel said.

"The boyfriend." He sure had a lot of energy left. This had been going on for a while. I pulled over and parked. The guy was still yelling into the intercom as we approached.

"Nadia! Nadia, I know you can hear me. Let me back in, or just come down and talk to me. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking." No response from the intercom. He slammed his palm against the wall.

"This is bullshit. You can't just ghost me like this. We've been together for two years!"

"Hey," Manuel called out. The guy turned. He was good-looking in that clean-cut way that probably worked well on first impressions. Right now, though, his face was red and his eyes had that wild look of a man rejecting reality.

"Who the fuck are you?" he shouted. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Friends of Nadia's," Manuel said.

"She was supposed to meet us this morning. She didn't show."

"Yeah, well, that's because she's being a crazy bitch who won't—""Don't," Kara said quietly. The guy's attention shifted to her, then to me. While Manuel and Kara stopped at a safe distance, I didn't, walking straight to him. I stepped close to him, pace slow but stable. He raised his hands to push me off. But I didn't budge the tiniest bit, so he just pushed himself off, as if trying to push a wall. I made another step, as he stumbled.

"The fuck?" he blurted, trying to stabilize. But his legs betrayed him, and instead, he stumbled and hit the wall with the back. I stopped half a foot in front of him, glaring him down. His eyes widened, mouth gaped open, body trembling. I pressed the intercom at Nadia's doorbell.

"Peter from the KSF here. We've come to pick you up with Manuel and Kara." The intercom buzzed.

"For real?" Nadia asked.

"What about Josh?"

"He won't make trouble." I kept glaring at apparently Josh.

"Don't worry." Josh gulped and slipped out. He stumbled from the wall, and bolted away. He ran like his life depended on it. I pressed the intercom again.

"He has just left."

"I'll ring you up," Nadia said and hung up.

"Okay," Manuel said, still standing in the spot.

"That was terrifying." I shrugged.

"You'll get used to it." The door buzzed. I pushed it open. We walked up three floors before we found a door standing ajar, with Nadia peeking out of it. She smiled and opened fully when she saw us. I let Manuel and Kara go in first. Nadia's apartment was small but clean, a studio with a kitchenette and a bed shoved into the corner. She sat on the edge of that bed, still in the clothes she'd probably slept in, her eyes red-rimmed.

"He showed up at six this morning," she said.

"I broke up with him yesterday after the tryouts. He didn't take it well."

"He seemed like a real winner," Manuel said. She laughed, a short bitter sound.

"He wasn't always like this. Or maybe he was, and I just didn't see it." She rubbed her face.

"God, I'm such an idiot. I should have just ignored him and come to do the paperwork thing. I was hoping he would leave and I could go, but he just wouldn't. He even had a friend bring him a takeout."

"We've got until five," Kara said.

"Still plenty of time." Nadia looked at us, and something in her expression broke. She relaxed, visibly.

"You drove all the way from Philly because I wasn't answering my phone?"

"We're supposed to be squadmates," Manuel said.

"That's gotta mean something, right?"

"We barely know each other."

"We'll get to know each other really well." He shrugged.

"After you get dressed, though. We really do need to get back for that paperwork." Nadia stood up, wiping her eyes, and walked over to me, stopping a few feet away.

"Thank you," she said, turning towards me.

"On the way, I'll need to hear what you told him that made him leave so fast." Ah, so she had seen us arrive but couldn't see the door. I shrugged.

"That doesn't matter anymore."

"Probably used a spell." Manuel let out a short laugh.

"It's what mages do, right?"

"No," Kara said.

"At least I don't think so." She narrowed her eyes, analyzing me.

"You've got real combat experience, don't you?"

"Yeah," I admitted. She offered me the perfect explanation. The truth, at least as far as I understood it, both for Hernandez and now for Josh, was that I simply triggered their survival instinct. I wasn't sure quite what enabled me to do this, but it didn't matter. To a common man, I was death. Instant, unavoidable, and giving a lot less of a fuck than they would have hoped for. The second their subconsciousness realized, their survival instinct forced them to run.

"The world of mages is very violent," I added.

"So, I'm used to conflict. Most people aren't." Manuel smiled.

"You can tell us all about it on the way back." I glanced at Nadia. She had changed in the meantime and packed six bags. We helped her carry it down. She had been planning to take an Uber, so we crammed everything into my car. Even Kara ended up with a bag at her feet and another on her lap. But we did manage to squeeze into the i30, and headed back to Philly. The drive back was faster, the traffic having cleared.

Manuel talked most of the way, filling the silence with stories about growing up in Miami, about his younger brother who kept getting into trouble, about why he'd joined the KSF. Kara made occasional comments, dry observations that were almost funny if you paid attention. Nadia was quiet, staring out the window, but she seemed calmer. About twenty minutes before we were to arrive, Manuel suddenly turned a notch more serious.

"But anyway, Peter, you wanted to tell us about the world of mages."

"No, I didn't." Everyone instantly started paying attention.

"Come on," Manuel said.

"You've got to tell us something."

"I don't," I said.

"And I shouldn't. Mages are organized into what has been called Secret Societies for over five thousand years. For all this time, until the whole kaiju thing started, those societies remained hidden. Hidden by a mechanism of killing anyone that leaked any information and everyone that got any information." The air in the car changed.

"That's why," I continued.

"Me using magic has no tells, no visual or sound effects, no leftover traces. That's how magic is practiced, in a way that is as inconspicuous as possible."

"I saw the angels on TV quite a few times," Manuel remarked.

"There was nothing inconspicuous about them."

"Big spells for big targets. Plus, if they were effective, there wouldn't be any kaiju problems, anymore. If anything, the whole upper echelons of Secret Societies have been furiously trying to invent spells and techniques to use against targets as big as kaiju, because so far, nothing like that was ever needed." He finally fell silent, thinking. We made it back to the administrative building after twelve. The officials were unimpressed by our late arrival, but they accepted our paperwork without comment.

I sat at a folding table with a stack of forms in front of me. Liability waivers. Medical disclosures. Emergency contact information. Next of kin. Insurance beneficiaries. A lot of questions about who should be notified if I died. I left most of those blank. But I did fill the next of kin. There was only one person who could heal me if I was actually dying, so without shame, I put Cassandra Laen'Ash as my next of kin. Not my mother, not my brother, but my vampire wanna-be-sister.

We both had some connection to the mythos of the devil, she was easily among the evilest person I knew, but if I was dying, she would come and heal me. And then she'd make a whole scene about it. With all paperwork done, we were sent to the barracks. Those awaited behind the main building, a row of prefab units that looked like they'd been dropped there by a giant who didn't care about aesthetics. Each unit contained four rooms, two on each side of a central hallway, with a shared bathroom at the end.

I was in room twelve with Manuel. The door was already open when I arrived, Manuel inside unpacking a duffel bag onto one of the two beds. He looked up when I entered, and this time he didn't freeze.

"Hey, roomie," he said.

"Hey." I set my suitcases down on the other bed. The room was small, maybe twelve by twelve, with cinderblock walls painted the traditional, soul-eating grey. Two beds, two desks, two chairs. A window that looked out on the parking lot. Home sweet home.

"Thanks again for today," Manuel said as he hung up a shirt.

"I know you didn't have to do that."

"Neither did you. You're the one who noticed she was missing."

"Yeah, but I just made phone calls. You're the one who actually chased off her ex-boyfriend." He shook his head.

"How did you do that, for real? He looked like he wanted to punch something, and then he just... ran."

"It's what Kara said. Preparedness for conflict." He shook his head.

"That's not an answer. You just let her do the explanation for you." Yeah, I did. I continued unpacking, ignoring him.

"By the way, what's with all the suits? The brands marks are scratched off, but by the cut, it's Armani, Versace, and they look expensive. You always wear a suit, too."

"It's the standard mage wear. Suits, both for men and for women. I think it goes back to European aristocracy, which had its doublets and other weird outfits."

"So… you're going to wear designer suits to kaiju hunter training?" I shrugged.

"Probably not. We should get uniforms tomorrow, so I'll wear that."

"But normally, you would wear the suit into combat."

"Yeah. How did you recognize the brands?" A smile brightened his face.

"Growing up, I wanted to be a fashion designer. Or at least a tailor. But my parents are from Cuba, so that wasn't happening. I know I said I joined the KSF to become a part of something larger than myself, but truth be told, I'm also here for the money. The pay is great, especially with no expenses, and if I can make it a couple of years, I'll save up enough to open my own tailor practice in some decent neighborhood. There's no one to tailor suits for where I come from." And fate put him into a squad with me.

I wasn't sure if it increased or decreased his chances, actually. I was going to help him survive. But I was also going to attract trouble.