Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 10 - The First Summit of the End of the World - I

  Rachel lay awake in the early hours of the next morning, watching Will's chest rise and fall next to her in the near-darkness. She had two goals in mind for the town hall. First, she would gather as much information as she could about who might be the mysterious supporter directing the golems that had attacked Cinza's group. From what she understood about the relationship between Alpha and Omega, the overwhelming forces that had once made all their lives a terrifying hell, neither would enter the town or interfere with their affairs so long as the other remained at large. It was an unwritten pact of mutual destruction from which neither had strayed.

  Until last night, Rachel sighed. What changed?

  She racked her memories of the past few days. There was a slowly increasing risk of them all being discovered, an outcome both spoke fervently against. It was one of the few things she had ever seen them agree on without debate, that the magical community was not ready to step out into the world at large. Neither held any illusions that they could keep their privacy forever, but they were unequivocal in their warnings that to be discovered so early into their development would spell doom for them all. On this, Rachel agreed wholeheartedly, but the time seemed to be approaching faster with every passing day. What if it all ends today? she wondered bitterly, before refocusing her mind back to the problem of Omega.

  There had been no significant events with the unawakened she could pinpoint. It had to be something else. Could it have been the murders? That was certainly an unprecedented and significant event. No one had killed another human with magic before. Rachel could see Alpha intervening to control the situation, or Omega railing on the community at large for allowing it to happen.

  But why would they target Cinza's group over such an attack? Neither had shown any particular hostility to the Grey cult in the past, and Cinza clearly did not have anyone with the ability to carve a hole straight through a guy's chest, if the mostly-futile fight against the golems was anything to go by. If Omega were trying to hunt down and punish the perpetrator, he'd badly erred in his target.

  Rachel doubted it. Omega wasn't the type to dole out punishment anyway. If he were attacking, it would be more specific than that.

  It had to be a new arrival. Rachel considered Rika's return, but dismissed the possibility. Rika might be insufferable to some, but she knew better than to piss off the Gods. Rachel also ignored her newfound companion Zack, though not without reservations. He had an air of mystery about him, and her examination of his connections from afar revealed so few that she was concerned she had made a mistake until she got Will to do the same. The boy was attached to virtually nothing, just an intense line to an object he kept inside his jacket and a dim line trailing away to Rika, who had been practically dragging him down the street. Any other connections were too faint or too distant to identify. Still, he'd been at Rika's side since the moment he'd arrived in town, and she just didn't see him as the killing type. There had to be someone she was missing.

  Or something, Rachel realized with a start. She almost woke up Will in her excitement, having finally come to a conclusion that made sense. It wasn't a person that had arrived. It was a simple piece of parchment.

  The three Gods were each specialists in their own way. While no one knew what Grey-eyes might be capable of, it was obvious her abilities tended toward movement and concealment, with how her appearance shifted and her way of vanishing instantly from a space without warning or a whisper of sound. Rachel still wasn't sure if she was truly teleporting or merely turning invisible and moving so fast out of an area that none spotted her departure. Alpha had taught the first of them about knowledge and mental magic, about the ability to modify one's mind and learn that which one couldn't possibly know. He'd also taught everyone the basics of elemental manipulation, particularly in regards to fire, which was how even the simplest of their number could toss around a ball of fire or levitate chalk.

  But it was Omega's powers which frightened her most. Omega was the master of Creation magic, that which dealt with manipulating base elements into something not quite alive, but still animate. The golems that had gone after Cinza could only have been his, as she'd known the moment she saw them. The means by which to create and control them were a secret he'd never shared, and Rachel realized now what the Scrap they'd discovered must contain.

  Omega was protecting his monopoly on that branch of magic, damn the consequences, and using his minions to keep from provoking a response from Alpha. Why he'd attacked Cinza's group was a question she still needed an answer to, but his motivations were clear enough. She'd managed to poke a sleeping dragon with her announcement at the Council. Now she had to control the fire before they were all burned to a crisp.

  Her second goal was much simpler. She was going to ruin Julian Black.