Read Online Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1) by M.R. Forbes - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: M.R. Forbes
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three-sixty, dropping it next to the table. She replaced it at the desk, opening the cover of the laptop and navigating back into the kinetics. We watched the dots a couple more times, and then started going over my route.
I found my other watch in another pocket. It wasn't the same one I had used to time my assault on the hulk twins; this one was more modern, with a curved, full-color screen and a buffet of apps installed on it. I opened up the timer app and reset it. I preferred the old-fashioned kind of watch because I didn't need to worry about the lithium running out of ions in the middle of a run. In this case, I needed the extra features.
It took another hour and a half and dozens of repetitions to get a clean plot of the inception, from the moment I snuck over the ten foot stone wall at exactly 10:31pm, to the second I put my hand on the prize at 10:39:08.
Eight minutes going in. It was a long time. I wasn't going to tell Dannie, but it made me nervous. So much could happen in eight minutes. So much could go wrong, and I had bet both our lives on it. Of course, she wasn't the one being threatened from the great beyond. Remembering what Rayon said gave me a new chill.
"That's it," I said, hitting the screen and setting the last timer. Once I started the countdown, it would vibrate on my wrist as each checkpoint was reached. If I hadn't made it... I didn't want to think about not making it.
"You still have a little time." She closed the lid of the laptop and rolled over to the window. I had parked in a good spot, leaving the van visible from our room. She wasn't looking for that though. She was looking to see if we were already being tailed.
"Anything?"
She reached up and lowered the blinds, closing them tight. "Not so far. Hey, did you see the news this morning? There's some Senator in Iowa pushing a meta registration bill."
"This again?"
In the sixty years since the reversal, and the forty since the Houses had smoothed the brave new world over, there had been what seemed like a bi-annual effort to force 'metas' to declare themselves. That was the fancy term the politicians used for wizards. The line of thinking was that we were inherently dangerous, because we could create destruction seemingly out of thin air. First, for most of us it didn't work like that. Second, guns were still a whole lot more dangerous than users were the vast majority of the time, and not everyone who owned a gun was subject to the scrutiny that we tended to fall under.
Dannie rolled her eyes. "The Houses will get it lobbied out again. Personally, I think she's just looking to line her pockets a bit more."
"She should introduce a subhuman equal rights bill if she just wants to get someone to pay for her next trip to Bora Bora."
There was no end of the groups that wanted to keep the leathers down and out, to go with the few that wanted to welcome them in. On one hand, I could understand the discomfort with having your CEO be a ten foot tall, muscular, greenish brute with long teeth jutting out from the corner of their mouth. It was a little intimidating. On the other, they were people. They looked different, and they had varying intelligence levels depending on their types, but we had the same origins. Some, like the ogres, even had their own specific usefulness. Fukishima would still be melting down if it hadn't been for them and their immunity to radiation.
We fell into a somewhat uncomfortable silence. We were trying to fill the gap while we waited for my flight. The fact was we were both nervous as hell about it. I'd done sneak and grabs before. So had she. We were good at them. This... This was the major leagues. This was serious business. If it wasn't for the fact that it was too late to go back, way too late, I would have been really tempted to call it off.
Dannie turned on the television. "I hate waiting on a job."
I flopped down on the bed with my jacket still on, while she flipped channels until she found some
I found my other watch in another pocket. It wasn't the same one I had used to time my assault on the hulk twins; this one was more modern, with a curved, full-color screen and a buffet of apps installed on it. I opened up the timer app and reset it. I preferred the old-fashioned kind of watch because I didn't need to worry about the lithium running out of ions in the middle of a run. In this case, I needed the extra features.
It took another hour and a half and dozens of repetitions to get a clean plot of the inception, from the moment I snuck over the ten foot stone wall at exactly 10:31pm, to the second I put my hand on the prize at 10:39:08.
Eight minutes going in. It was a long time. I wasn't going to tell Dannie, but it made me nervous. So much could happen in eight minutes. So much could go wrong, and I had bet both our lives on it. Of course, she wasn't the one being threatened from the great beyond. Remembering what Rayon said gave me a new chill.
"That's it," I said, hitting the screen and setting the last timer. Once I started the countdown, it would vibrate on my wrist as each checkpoint was reached. If I hadn't made it... I didn't want to think about not making it.
"You still have a little time." She closed the lid of the laptop and rolled over to the window. I had parked in a good spot, leaving the van visible from our room. She wasn't looking for that though. She was looking to see if we were already being tailed.
"Anything?"
She reached up and lowered the blinds, closing them tight. "Not so far. Hey, did you see the news this morning? There's some Senator in Iowa pushing a meta registration bill."
"This again?"
In the sixty years since the reversal, and the forty since the Houses had smoothed the brave new world over, there had been what seemed like a bi-annual effort to force 'metas' to declare themselves. That was the fancy term the politicians used for wizards. The line of thinking was that we were inherently dangerous, because we could create destruction seemingly out of thin air. First, for most of us it didn't work like that. Second, guns were still a whole lot more dangerous than users were the vast majority of the time, and not everyone who owned a gun was subject to the scrutiny that we tended to fall under.
Dannie rolled her eyes. "The Houses will get it lobbied out again. Personally, I think she's just looking to line her pockets a bit more."
"She should introduce a subhuman equal rights bill if she just wants to get someone to pay for her next trip to Bora Bora."
There was no end of the groups that wanted to keep the leathers down and out, to go with the few that wanted to welcome them in. On one hand, I could understand the discomfort with having your CEO be a ten foot tall, muscular, greenish brute with long teeth jutting out from the corner of their mouth. It was a little intimidating. On the other, they were people. They looked different, and they had varying intelligence levels depending on their types, but we had the same origins. Some, like the ogres, even had their own specific usefulness. Fukishima would still be melting down if it hadn't been for them and their immunity to radiation.
We fell into a somewhat uncomfortable silence. We were trying to fill the gap while we waited for my flight. The fact was we were both nervous as hell about it. I'd done sneak and grabs before. So had she. We were good at them. This... This was the major leagues. This was serious business. If it wasn't for the fact that it was too late to go back, way too late, I would have been really tempted to call it off.
Dannie turned on the television. "I hate waiting on a job."
I flopped down on the bed with my jacket still on, while she flipped channels until she found some
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