Was (Was #1)

1x18: The evil gale that cannot be grasped

Episode 1x18: The evil gale that cannot be grasped

London, December 13th, 2009

This guy’s completely nuts.

Not the Van Cartier kind of nuts—Lyle Karlowitz didn’t give off the disgusting impression of toying with people only to gut them on a whim five minutes later. Nevertheless, the more Echoes sat behind the man, the more he doubted they were going to get out of this unharmed.

The black cab dove straight into a thick layer of fog, into what was supposed to be Torrington Square. His eyes still on the road he probably couldn’t see anymore, its driver shifted gears in deft moves and hit the brakes, before speeding up again. A strange fellow, for sure; Echoes still had no idea what kind of magic he practised, and given how he reacted, odds were that Lyle himself had absolutely no clue about it either. There was a definite dichotomy to his actions, his confused behaviour belying his actual driving skills.

It’s like he’s on auto-pilot. Yeah, that’s it. He’s all instincts.

If they went on like this, they were bound to run into a wall, a car, a passer-by or any other urban element; however, this was the direction the Technomancer’s vector-tracking application kept on flashing on his Smartphone’s screen. The girl was there, somewhere behind the wild entropic waves that now surrounded the centre of the Bloomsbury area and blurred all of his attempts at locating her according to specific coordinates. Byng Place was the closest he had managed to pinpoint, even though he had in the meantime opened Grendel to get exact coordinates; he hoped now that they weren’t going to land a hundred metres from their target or, worse, directly on her.

A mage with a knack to get into trouble faster than out of it, and a guy who lost all sense of logics as soon as his girlfriend was in danger: what a winning team. In any case, there was no going back now.

‘Keep going straight on,’ he said to Karlowitz, his eyes on the phone to check that the connection was still active. ‘As long as the line’s on, we can do it.’

Wait, why am I doing all that shit, again?

Oh yeah... I kinda wanted to investigate that guy discreetly. Fish out for intel and all that.

Great job, E. Really, great job. Next time you want to play spy, run Splinter Cell instead.

At the last moment, with inhuman reflexes, Karlowitz gave a brutal turn of the steering wheel, as in an attempt to dodge an unforeseen obstacle. Carried by its speed, the car started skidding through the short street, and the Technomancer braced himself for the impact, curling up with one arm on the back of his neck, the other shielding Grendel as best as he could. Another turn of the wheel compensated for the inertia; all the while, the driver shifted into neutral gear instead of braking, barely avoiding losing control. Although the tyres still screamed on the cold ground, he managed to stabilise the cab a few metres from the nearest set of buildings. Then the car jumped forward again, reaching for another spot in front of them, and came to an abrupt halt.

Echoes raised his head and looked through the windows, left, then right; in a split second, his mind registered all the details the headlights had briefly unveiled. The mists twirling around the old cloisters, like miasmas slowly infecting the whole area; the girl sitting against the wall, behind the fence, in a curious position, as if restraining herself, a laptop open on her knees; her expression in that moment, poised between terror and uttermost surprise; her pale face, her features that matched the little he had found about her online. So she’s Louisa Keynes? Cute. Yeah, they really all get the nice girls. Then his other senses picked up the rest as well: the stench of a kind of magic that sent shivers down his spine; the faint glow of a protection circle unfortunately fading; the tremendous entropic perturbation gathered barely a few steps from the car. Another woman stood on the right of the car, next to a vibrating presence; as to the latter, he could only make out what looked like a vague silhouette, a mere shadow against the white foggy curtain, arms raised, hands pointing at them—not at them exactly, but at something beyond the car, at the girl, in fact. Far, far away, a bell was tolling, and a voice whispered words as old as the earth itself.