Prisoner, page 26
part #2 of The Contractors Series
“Everything going smoothly?” Eleanor asked. “Complaints?”
“We’ve broken up a few fights, but nothing serious,” Tamara said. “You crush everyone together in tents for days on end and there’s going to be some cabin fever. Most are responding pretty well, especially after we installed a few short-range cell towers. A lot of the tension came off once they could get on the internet and contact friends and family, see that everyone was safe. There’s longer lines at the charging stations for tablets and cell phones than there are for water.”
Eleanor could only chuckle. “I guess I don’t blame them. Information is at a premium.”
“We’re hoping to repurpose volunteers into useful labor,” Tamara said. “Give them something to do, make them feel like their contributing, and also adding to our capability to produce enchanted armor, weapons, ammunition that can hurt the Vorid. They don’t need magic to etch a rune pattern, just a good set of stencils.”
“I’m surprised you’re expecting so many more,” Eleanor said. “700,000 total? Just at this camp?”
“A lot don’t want to leave their homes at first,” Tamara said. “Tons of conspiracy theories about why they’re gathering everyone up, a lot of plain old natural resistance to up and abandoning their lives. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s not worse. We’ve got two dozen temporary holding cells but only half of them occupied. You show someone a picture of that black ship sitting over New York and they come around pretty quick.”
Eleanor couldn’t help a sense of grim pessimism when she was reminded of the ruined state of New York City. The black columns that produced the extractors were still standing in the many metropolitan areas where they’d touched down. The strange Vorid obelisks were surrounded with mundane defenses, and magicians were working on them with magic, but they hadn’t been able to do much other than scratch them up slightly. The structure of the things didn’t even make sense—they were too skinny, too tall, and had no foundation. At that height, strong enough winds should cause them to topple, but they defied normal physics in ways that weren’t currently understood.
It was possible to replicate similar phenomena with magic, but they couldn’t find any magic holding them up. The working theory was that it had something to do with their ability to travel from another dimension—or, that they were only looking at part of the object, and the rest was anchored somewhere else, tied through the walls that sat between the worlds.
The ship was another anomaly. The floating fortress above New York City hadn’t moved, even following the death of the Vorid lord. It sat there, suspended in the sky like a black glacier. Was it the empty shell of a defeated foe, or a beachhead established for the next attack?
Attempts to enter the interior were fruitless. It was made of the same black metal as the columns, invulnerable to any attack they could muster. They hadn’t used every card up their sleeves, especially concerning larger magical formations, and the mundanes hadn’t used the serious ordinance yet. The problem with turning up the heat was, again, collateral damage to the city. Granted, it was already seriously damaged by the battle, but there was no need to take a nuke to the thing before it became absolutely necessary. Manhattan would be irradiated for a thousand years. Rather, it would have been. Magic could clean up the worst of it, assuming—
“Miss magician! Missus magician!” A woman skipped across the drainage ditch and came up to them, beelining for Tamara. Her blue-gold tabard was only worn by members of the Ivory Dawn, so there was no mystery as to who she was. “Please, can you help me? My son cut his leg, I’m worried about how much it’s bleeding!”
Tamara looked to Eleanor, and Eleanor nodded. Never miss a chance for good PR. It was only a small detour, and she was curious for perspective from someone down on the ground; the benefits made up for the delay. She might be fighting with her father, but his lessons were still drilled into her head.
“I can take a look,” Tamara said. They followed the woman a few yards into the camp, back to her tent. Her son was huddled inside; he had the gangly, slightly awkward proportions of a boy starting to hit puberty full stride. His leg was propped up on a small box. Gauze wrapped repeatedly around his shin was stained red-brown with blood.
Tamara kneeled next to him. “This looks pretty serious. What happened?”
The boy’s eyes lit up like flashlights and darted between Eleanor and Tamara. His body language was tense, nervous—maybe a little starstruck. His mother, more concerned with his health than the niceties of conversation, broke the silence. “He was playing with some of our neighbors and cut his leg on a piece of trash. Metal. It was deep.”
“Did you ask for a doctor?”
“Two days ago,” his mother said. “They told me he’d be here yesterday, and again today, but it’s been hours past the time he was supposed to come. I know they’ve got a lot on their plate, but I’m worried it’s infected.”
“Let’s get the bandage off first,” Tamara said. She unraveled the gauze, peeling it off and placing it aside. The boy winced as she tugged the last bit free. The wound didn’t quite look infected, but it was a mess of scabs and still moist. “Lord,” Tamara said. “What the hell did you cut yourself on?”
“U-um...fence,” the boy mumbled. “Near the trucks.”
“You were trying to climb the fence surrounding the military convoy?” Tamara said.
“Alex!” his mother said. “That is not what you told me!”
“Sorry.” Alex looked away. His face was beat red.
Tamara sighed, then set her hands over his wound. “Anah Allo’nah Atakai.” A spring-green sigil flashed under her fingers; the glow lit the tent. Tamara repeated the chant as she guided her hands up the cut, using the words to guide the intent of her power.
After moving her sigil up and down the wound, Tamara let the magic fade. The wet was gone, and the cut was sealed; a faint pink scar line was the only remaining sign of the injury. Eleanor was impressed. The worse a healer, the messier the results. There was more than one magician with a nasty scar from a botched healing. Tamara obviously had plenty of practice; she didn’t even look phased by the effort.
“You’ll need to wash that off, but the skin and the cut are fine,” Tamara said. She looked up at Alex. “Don’t mess around near the where the troops are working. We’ve got a lot to do and we don’t need more problems, so don’t make any. I’ll forget about it this time, but I don’t want to hear more bad news from this tent. Understood?”
Alex jerked his head up and down rapidly. His mother was bordering on teary-eyed. “Thank you, thank you so much! I’m so glad we have you all. Thank you.”
“All part of the job, ma’am,” she said. She joined Eleanor outside the tent. “Stay out of trouble.”
Alex kept nodding. “Um, can—can I ask a question?”
“Sure,” Tamara said, leaning back under the tent flap.
“I was watching some of the videos Daniel posted online,” he said. “Is he okay with the government and everything? People are really worried because he said the magicians didn’t like him.”
Eleanor and Tamara froze.
“What?” Eleanor said. She pushed into the tent alongside Tamara. “What did you say?”
Alex frowned, confused. “You know, uh...Daniel Fitzgerald. He helped fight in New York.”
“Online videos.” Eleanor had a horrifying flashback to when Daniel nearly blackmailed her with his cell phone. Even though they’d moved past it, the thought still raised her hackles. “Show me.”
“Uh...s-sure,” Alex said. His stammering increased as Eleanor dropped to a knee next to him, face reddening. He rummaged through a backpack and pulled out a tablet. “It came up on YouTube, um...like, uh, night before last.”
“Is everything alright?” the mother asked.
“It’s fine,” Tamara said quickly, “but we’d like to see the video.”
“Oh. Alex, go ahead with your computer screen.”
Alex unlocked the tablet and rolled his eyes in the way only a son could. “Mom. It’s a tablet.”
“Sure, honey.” She turned and half-whispered to Eleanor. “I honestly have no idea how he learned to use that thing.”
Eleanor and Tamara hunched over the screen as Alex pulled up YouTube. A brief buffering circle later, a video came up showing Daniel Fitzgerald backing away from the camera. The view was limited to a red couch set against an exposed brick wall. There were several photographs on the wall above the couch—family photos of the apartment’s former occupants. “This is the first video,” Alex said.
Daniel slumped down onto the couch. He sighed to himself, then looked up at the camera. “Okay,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother with this, but I think it’s important. I don’t know what the magicians and the government are planning, but you should know what’s going on—what’s really going on.
“Basically, what Henry Astor said about the Vorid in his speech on TV is true. They’re coming for us. They want our souls. They want to capture and harvest every human being on the planet. But...” Daniel scratched his temple, as if deciding where to go from there. “...it’s not just Earth. The Vorid are from another dimension, another universe. They’re a huge collective, and they’re attacking other universes, too. Their goal is to absorb everything. It’s a religious thing with them. They believe that for the multiverse to be reborn, all the energy, all the souls, have to be gathered back to a single point. This is the justification for their war.” Daniel sighed. “I’m not sure if I’m explaining that right, but it’s the best I can do. I don’t really understand it entirely myself. But they think if they do nothing, then all the universes will slowly run out of energy anyway, until everything is dead, and there is no second chance.”
Eleanor felt like her eyes were about to roll out of her skull. Too much was packed into her head—the mixed bitter-sweet happiness of seeing him again, the shock at what he was saying, and the gumption he had to post it straight onto YouTube.
“Too bad for them, the aliens ran into Earth’s magicians, who are fighting back. And, another race, the Klide. The Klide are fighting against the Vorid across the multiverse. They think they can find another way to save all the universes that doesn’t involve killing basically everything. So, they’re on our side.
“The Klide offered to help our magicians, but we turned them down,” Daniel said. “It’s a little complicated and political, so here goes.”
Daniel went on to explain everything, delving right into that most taboo of subjects—the vampiric spell, the history he knew of the magic world. Rachel must have told him more than a few things—there was no other way he could have known. After establishing the basics, he started on the contractors, explaining their position as fugitive vigilantes from the established magical community that were forced to fight the Vorid from the shadows.
“My hope is,” Daniel said, “that by helping them in New York, I can show them that I mean well and that I’m not trying to rock the boat, I guess. I don’t know if it will work, but I don’t have much choice.”
A rumble sounded over the camera. The building shook. Daniel flashed up from the couch—one instant sitting, the next, standing, his head cocked to the side. A hazy white light drifted around him, the discharge of excess energy from his power. “Okay,” he said, “the rest will have to wait until episode 2, things are getting a little hairy. Oh yeah.” Daniel looked at the camera and pumped a fist. “Go Browns!”
The video ended there, about 10 minutes in length. But it was a hell of a 10 minutes. Eleanor and Tamara shared a long look.
“Do you guys want to see the others?” Alex asked.
“Others?” Eleanor said.
“Yeah. He posted more.”
“How many videos are there, exactly?” Eleanor asked, trying to keep the strain out of her voice.
“Three,” Alex said. “There’s one being uploaded every day. They keep getting deleted, but people are mirroring them so much I think they gave up and let them sit there.”
“Mirroring?” Eleanor asked.
“They download the video and put it back up on YouTube themselves, or somewhere else on the internet,” Alex said. He was more confident talking about a subject in which he was well-versed. “So say there’s copyright infringement or something else that gets a video taken down. If people download it before that happens, then post it somewhere else, it has to be found again before it can be deleted. If a thousand people do it, it’s almost impossible to delete all the copies. They stopped trying to delete them yesterday. The one I showed you has 300 million views, but it would have over a billion now if you counted from before it was deleted. People are translating all his stuff into different languages too.”
“Wait, wait,” Eleanor said. “You said there are more being uploaded?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, as if it was a simple matter-of-fact. “His main account got banned but then a different account started posting them anyway. Everyone’s waiting on the fourth video to come up today.”
Eleanor shook her head. “But he can’t be putting up the videos himself.”
Alex’s eyes widened. “Is it true then?”
“Is what true?”
“Mages don’t like contractors? Is the magic they’re using actually evil?” Alex seemed thoughtful. “Daniel seems like a good guy, but nobody really knows what to think. But if he was all that bad, why would he bother with this in the first place? Well, some people think he might be trying to make himself look good…” Alex trailed off, looking to her.
Eleanor’s lips squirmed uncomfortably. She was too busy processing the implications to come up with a clever answer. Daniel couldn’t be uploading internet videos from Hell. It was physically impossible. They’d confiscated and subsequently destroyed his cell phone to boot.
Tamara broke the awkward silence. “That’s his point of view, but it’s a little more complicated than what he mentioned,” she said.
“Then why were they trying to delete his videos at first?” Alex said. He looked at Eleanor. “There’s a rumor he’s locked up somewhere and the videos are pre-scheduled releases.”
“Alex,” his mother said, “you’re being rude!”
“It’s fine. It’s a good question.” Eleanor took a breath and composed herself. “I’m sorry, but we can’t go into it. The rumors aren’t true. Official news will come from the military and the Ivory Dawn.” Eleanor stood. “Tamara, let’s go.”
They left the tent before Alex could pester them with another round of questions. Thankfully, Alex’s mother held him back from trying to follow them to the main path. Eleanor doubled her previous pace, anxious to get to her destination. Xik’s spell wouldn’t last forever, and she needed to see the Fitzgeralds before that.
Tamara gave Eleanor a respectful silence until they were a little bit along. “Miss Astor...are we doing anything about this?”
“Alex said Daniel’s YouTube account was banned, but then another account got made and kept posting videos.”
“That’s right.”
Eleanor looked at her. “The videos aren’t being released on an automated schedule. That would have been stopped by banning his account. The Ivory Dawn would ban the second account too, but they haven’t. That means the person knew to hide themselves and how to upload the videos. Or, they were told how to do it.”
“So Fitzgerald set all this up beforehand?” Tamara said. “How did he know he’d be banished to Hell?”
“He didn’t,” Eleanor said quietly. “He made himself an insurance policy, just in case.”
Tamara spat to the side of the road. “Clever little bastard.”
If only you knew, Eleanor thought. “I have a feeling I know who’s posting the videos.”
Tamara’s face firmed in understanding. “His family.”
“They’re the only other people he’d trust to do it,” Eleanor said.
Tamara took the lead in walking. “I’ll take you straight to them. We’ll confiscate their electronics—if nothing else goes up on YouTube, that’ll be the proof.”
“I want to try to do this delicately,” Eleanor said. “I’ll talk to them first, and we’ll decide how to proceed from there.”
“Yes ma’am.”
After a few minutes of walking, Tamara and Eleanor checked in at the military post near the Fitzgeralds’ tent. There was a mage—one rank under Tamara—who practically beat his chest to a bruise saluting Eleanor. Tamara spoke briefly with the squad leader who arranged for a small detachment of 3 soldiers to follow them. It made for a bit more of a spectacle as they marched off the path and into the tents, but the time for subtlety had ended. People got oddly quiet when they saw Tamara’s tabard, watching them pass before continuing their conversations in hushed voices.
The Fitzgeralds’ tent—little more than a big grey pyramid—was near the edge of the forest. A fence had been put up to prevent bored camp dwellers from getting themselves lost in the trees. As they approached, the soldiers fanned out, presenting themselves as a barrier for anyone that might intrude on the conversation. As Tamara and Eleanor neared the tent’s entrance flap, it opened.
James Fitzgerald—Daniel’s father—paused halfway out of the tent, one hand keeping the flap over his head. He gave them a once-over, glanced at the soldiers, then drew himself up and out the rest of the way. He had thinning, light brown hair and a sallow look to his face, like someone finally getting over a long illness. His thick glasses completed a look that, generously, would be described as intellectual.
James cleared his throat. He looked more resigned at their presence than anything else. Clearly he’d expected a visit at some point. “Is this about...we haven’t been able to get in touch with Daniel. Is he alright?”
Eleanor closed to a more comfortable speaking distance. Tamara kept at her shoulder. “That’s a complicated question,” Eleanor said. “Can you tell me what you know about him being a contractor?”
“I didn’t know,” James said. “He never told me, or Felix. We only found out the other day, along with everyone else. Did he get hurt? Is he safe?”
“He’s in one piece,” Eleanor said. Not exactly safe, but alive. “I won’t forget what he did for us in New York.”
“We’ve broken up a few fights, but nothing serious,” Tamara said. “You crush everyone together in tents for days on end and there’s going to be some cabin fever. Most are responding pretty well, especially after we installed a few short-range cell towers. A lot of the tension came off once they could get on the internet and contact friends and family, see that everyone was safe. There’s longer lines at the charging stations for tablets and cell phones than there are for water.”
Eleanor could only chuckle. “I guess I don’t blame them. Information is at a premium.”
“We’re hoping to repurpose volunteers into useful labor,” Tamara said. “Give them something to do, make them feel like their contributing, and also adding to our capability to produce enchanted armor, weapons, ammunition that can hurt the Vorid. They don’t need magic to etch a rune pattern, just a good set of stencils.”
“I’m surprised you’re expecting so many more,” Eleanor said. “700,000 total? Just at this camp?”
“A lot don’t want to leave their homes at first,” Tamara said. “Tons of conspiracy theories about why they’re gathering everyone up, a lot of plain old natural resistance to up and abandoning their lives. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s not worse. We’ve got two dozen temporary holding cells but only half of them occupied. You show someone a picture of that black ship sitting over New York and they come around pretty quick.”
Eleanor couldn’t help a sense of grim pessimism when she was reminded of the ruined state of New York City. The black columns that produced the extractors were still standing in the many metropolitan areas where they’d touched down. The strange Vorid obelisks were surrounded with mundane defenses, and magicians were working on them with magic, but they hadn’t been able to do much other than scratch them up slightly. The structure of the things didn’t even make sense—they were too skinny, too tall, and had no foundation. At that height, strong enough winds should cause them to topple, but they defied normal physics in ways that weren’t currently understood.
It was possible to replicate similar phenomena with magic, but they couldn’t find any magic holding them up. The working theory was that it had something to do with their ability to travel from another dimension—or, that they were only looking at part of the object, and the rest was anchored somewhere else, tied through the walls that sat between the worlds.
The ship was another anomaly. The floating fortress above New York City hadn’t moved, even following the death of the Vorid lord. It sat there, suspended in the sky like a black glacier. Was it the empty shell of a defeated foe, or a beachhead established for the next attack?
Attempts to enter the interior were fruitless. It was made of the same black metal as the columns, invulnerable to any attack they could muster. They hadn’t used every card up their sleeves, especially concerning larger magical formations, and the mundanes hadn’t used the serious ordinance yet. The problem with turning up the heat was, again, collateral damage to the city. Granted, it was already seriously damaged by the battle, but there was no need to take a nuke to the thing before it became absolutely necessary. Manhattan would be irradiated for a thousand years. Rather, it would have been. Magic could clean up the worst of it, assuming—
“Miss magician! Missus magician!” A woman skipped across the drainage ditch and came up to them, beelining for Tamara. Her blue-gold tabard was only worn by members of the Ivory Dawn, so there was no mystery as to who she was. “Please, can you help me? My son cut his leg, I’m worried about how much it’s bleeding!”
Tamara looked to Eleanor, and Eleanor nodded. Never miss a chance for good PR. It was only a small detour, and she was curious for perspective from someone down on the ground; the benefits made up for the delay. She might be fighting with her father, but his lessons were still drilled into her head.
“I can take a look,” Tamara said. They followed the woman a few yards into the camp, back to her tent. Her son was huddled inside; he had the gangly, slightly awkward proportions of a boy starting to hit puberty full stride. His leg was propped up on a small box. Gauze wrapped repeatedly around his shin was stained red-brown with blood.
Tamara kneeled next to him. “This looks pretty serious. What happened?”
The boy’s eyes lit up like flashlights and darted between Eleanor and Tamara. His body language was tense, nervous—maybe a little starstruck. His mother, more concerned with his health than the niceties of conversation, broke the silence. “He was playing with some of our neighbors and cut his leg on a piece of trash. Metal. It was deep.”
“Did you ask for a doctor?”
“Two days ago,” his mother said. “They told me he’d be here yesterday, and again today, but it’s been hours past the time he was supposed to come. I know they’ve got a lot on their plate, but I’m worried it’s infected.”
“Let’s get the bandage off first,” Tamara said. She unraveled the gauze, peeling it off and placing it aside. The boy winced as she tugged the last bit free. The wound didn’t quite look infected, but it was a mess of scabs and still moist. “Lord,” Tamara said. “What the hell did you cut yourself on?”
“U-um...fence,” the boy mumbled. “Near the trucks.”
“You were trying to climb the fence surrounding the military convoy?” Tamara said.
“Alex!” his mother said. “That is not what you told me!”
“Sorry.” Alex looked away. His face was beat red.
Tamara sighed, then set her hands over his wound. “Anah Allo’nah Atakai.” A spring-green sigil flashed under her fingers; the glow lit the tent. Tamara repeated the chant as she guided her hands up the cut, using the words to guide the intent of her power.
After moving her sigil up and down the wound, Tamara let the magic fade. The wet was gone, and the cut was sealed; a faint pink scar line was the only remaining sign of the injury. Eleanor was impressed. The worse a healer, the messier the results. There was more than one magician with a nasty scar from a botched healing. Tamara obviously had plenty of practice; she didn’t even look phased by the effort.
“You’ll need to wash that off, but the skin and the cut are fine,” Tamara said. She looked up at Alex. “Don’t mess around near the where the troops are working. We’ve got a lot to do and we don’t need more problems, so don’t make any. I’ll forget about it this time, but I don’t want to hear more bad news from this tent. Understood?”
Alex jerked his head up and down rapidly. His mother was bordering on teary-eyed. “Thank you, thank you so much! I’m so glad we have you all. Thank you.”
“All part of the job, ma’am,” she said. She joined Eleanor outside the tent. “Stay out of trouble.”
Alex kept nodding. “Um, can—can I ask a question?”
“Sure,” Tamara said, leaning back under the tent flap.
“I was watching some of the videos Daniel posted online,” he said. “Is he okay with the government and everything? People are really worried because he said the magicians didn’t like him.”
Eleanor and Tamara froze.
“What?” Eleanor said. She pushed into the tent alongside Tamara. “What did you say?”
Alex frowned, confused. “You know, uh...Daniel Fitzgerald. He helped fight in New York.”
“Online videos.” Eleanor had a horrifying flashback to when Daniel nearly blackmailed her with his cell phone. Even though they’d moved past it, the thought still raised her hackles. “Show me.”
“Uh...s-sure,” Alex said. His stammering increased as Eleanor dropped to a knee next to him, face reddening. He rummaged through a backpack and pulled out a tablet. “It came up on YouTube, um...like, uh, night before last.”
“Is everything alright?” the mother asked.
“It’s fine,” Tamara said quickly, “but we’d like to see the video.”
“Oh. Alex, go ahead with your computer screen.”
Alex unlocked the tablet and rolled his eyes in the way only a son could. “Mom. It’s a tablet.”
“Sure, honey.” She turned and half-whispered to Eleanor. “I honestly have no idea how he learned to use that thing.”
Eleanor and Tamara hunched over the screen as Alex pulled up YouTube. A brief buffering circle later, a video came up showing Daniel Fitzgerald backing away from the camera. The view was limited to a red couch set against an exposed brick wall. There were several photographs on the wall above the couch—family photos of the apartment’s former occupants. “This is the first video,” Alex said.
Daniel slumped down onto the couch. He sighed to himself, then looked up at the camera. “Okay,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother with this, but I think it’s important. I don’t know what the magicians and the government are planning, but you should know what’s going on—what’s really going on.
“Basically, what Henry Astor said about the Vorid in his speech on TV is true. They’re coming for us. They want our souls. They want to capture and harvest every human being on the planet. But...” Daniel scratched his temple, as if deciding where to go from there. “...it’s not just Earth. The Vorid are from another dimension, another universe. They’re a huge collective, and they’re attacking other universes, too. Their goal is to absorb everything. It’s a religious thing with them. They believe that for the multiverse to be reborn, all the energy, all the souls, have to be gathered back to a single point. This is the justification for their war.” Daniel sighed. “I’m not sure if I’m explaining that right, but it’s the best I can do. I don’t really understand it entirely myself. But they think if they do nothing, then all the universes will slowly run out of energy anyway, until everything is dead, and there is no second chance.”
Eleanor felt like her eyes were about to roll out of her skull. Too much was packed into her head—the mixed bitter-sweet happiness of seeing him again, the shock at what he was saying, and the gumption he had to post it straight onto YouTube.
“Too bad for them, the aliens ran into Earth’s magicians, who are fighting back. And, another race, the Klide. The Klide are fighting against the Vorid across the multiverse. They think they can find another way to save all the universes that doesn’t involve killing basically everything. So, they’re on our side.
“The Klide offered to help our magicians, but we turned them down,” Daniel said. “It’s a little complicated and political, so here goes.”
Daniel went on to explain everything, delving right into that most taboo of subjects—the vampiric spell, the history he knew of the magic world. Rachel must have told him more than a few things—there was no other way he could have known. After establishing the basics, he started on the contractors, explaining their position as fugitive vigilantes from the established magical community that were forced to fight the Vorid from the shadows.
“My hope is,” Daniel said, “that by helping them in New York, I can show them that I mean well and that I’m not trying to rock the boat, I guess. I don’t know if it will work, but I don’t have much choice.”
A rumble sounded over the camera. The building shook. Daniel flashed up from the couch—one instant sitting, the next, standing, his head cocked to the side. A hazy white light drifted around him, the discharge of excess energy from his power. “Okay,” he said, “the rest will have to wait until episode 2, things are getting a little hairy. Oh yeah.” Daniel looked at the camera and pumped a fist. “Go Browns!”
The video ended there, about 10 minutes in length. But it was a hell of a 10 minutes. Eleanor and Tamara shared a long look.
“Do you guys want to see the others?” Alex asked.
“Others?” Eleanor said.
“Yeah. He posted more.”
“How many videos are there, exactly?” Eleanor asked, trying to keep the strain out of her voice.
“Three,” Alex said. “There’s one being uploaded every day. They keep getting deleted, but people are mirroring them so much I think they gave up and let them sit there.”
“Mirroring?” Eleanor asked.
“They download the video and put it back up on YouTube themselves, or somewhere else on the internet,” Alex said. He was more confident talking about a subject in which he was well-versed. “So say there’s copyright infringement or something else that gets a video taken down. If people download it before that happens, then post it somewhere else, it has to be found again before it can be deleted. If a thousand people do it, it’s almost impossible to delete all the copies. They stopped trying to delete them yesterday. The one I showed you has 300 million views, but it would have over a billion now if you counted from before it was deleted. People are translating all his stuff into different languages too.”
“Wait, wait,” Eleanor said. “You said there are more being uploaded?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, as if it was a simple matter-of-fact. “His main account got banned but then a different account started posting them anyway. Everyone’s waiting on the fourth video to come up today.”
Eleanor shook her head. “But he can’t be putting up the videos himself.”
Alex’s eyes widened. “Is it true then?”
“Is what true?”
“Mages don’t like contractors? Is the magic they’re using actually evil?” Alex seemed thoughtful. “Daniel seems like a good guy, but nobody really knows what to think. But if he was all that bad, why would he bother with this in the first place? Well, some people think he might be trying to make himself look good…” Alex trailed off, looking to her.
Eleanor’s lips squirmed uncomfortably. She was too busy processing the implications to come up with a clever answer. Daniel couldn’t be uploading internet videos from Hell. It was physically impossible. They’d confiscated and subsequently destroyed his cell phone to boot.
Tamara broke the awkward silence. “That’s his point of view, but it’s a little more complicated than what he mentioned,” she said.
“Then why were they trying to delete his videos at first?” Alex said. He looked at Eleanor. “There’s a rumor he’s locked up somewhere and the videos are pre-scheduled releases.”
“Alex,” his mother said, “you’re being rude!”
“It’s fine. It’s a good question.” Eleanor took a breath and composed herself. “I’m sorry, but we can’t go into it. The rumors aren’t true. Official news will come from the military and the Ivory Dawn.” Eleanor stood. “Tamara, let’s go.”
They left the tent before Alex could pester them with another round of questions. Thankfully, Alex’s mother held him back from trying to follow them to the main path. Eleanor doubled her previous pace, anxious to get to her destination. Xik’s spell wouldn’t last forever, and she needed to see the Fitzgeralds before that.
Tamara gave Eleanor a respectful silence until they were a little bit along. “Miss Astor...are we doing anything about this?”
“Alex said Daniel’s YouTube account was banned, but then another account got made and kept posting videos.”
“That’s right.”
Eleanor looked at her. “The videos aren’t being released on an automated schedule. That would have been stopped by banning his account. The Ivory Dawn would ban the second account too, but they haven’t. That means the person knew to hide themselves and how to upload the videos. Or, they were told how to do it.”
“So Fitzgerald set all this up beforehand?” Tamara said. “How did he know he’d be banished to Hell?”
“He didn’t,” Eleanor said quietly. “He made himself an insurance policy, just in case.”
Tamara spat to the side of the road. “Clever little bastard.”
If only you knew, Eleanor thought. “I have a feeling I know who’s posting the videos.”
Tamara’s face firmed in understanding. “His family.”
“They’re the only other people he’d trust to do it,” Eleanor said.
Tamara took the lead in walking. “I’ll take you straight to them. We’ll confiscate their electronics—if nothing else goes up on YouTube, that’ll be the proof.”
“I want to try to do this delicately,” Eleanor said. “I’ll talk to them first, and we’ll decide how to proceed from there.”
“Yes ma’am.”
After a few minutes of walking, Tamara and Eleanor checked in at the military post near the Fitzgeralds’ tent. There was a mage—one rank under Tamara—who practically beat his chest to a bruise saluting Eleanor. Tamara spoke briefly with the squad leader who arranged for a small detachment of 3 soldiers to follow them. It made for a bit more of a spectacle as they marched off the path and into the tents, but the time for subtlety had ended. People got oddly quiet when they saw Tamara’s tabard, watching them pass before continuing their conversations in hushed voices.
The Fitzgeralds’ tent—little more than a big grey pyramid—was near the edge of the forest. A fence had been put up to prevent bored camp dwellers from getting themselves lost in the trees. As they approached, the soldiers fanned out, presenting themselves as a barrier for anyone that might intrude on the conversation. As Tamara and Eleanor neared the tent’s entrance flap, it opened.
James Fitzgerald—Daniel’s father—paused halfway out of the tent, one hand keeping the flap over his head. He gave them a once-over, glanced at the soldiers, then drew himself up and out the rest of the way. He had thinning, light brown hair and a sallow look to his face, like someone finally getting over a long illness. His thick glasses completed a look that, generously, would be described as intellectual.
James cleared his throat. He looked more resigned at their presence than anything else. Clearly he’d expected a visit at some point. “Is this about...we haven’t been able to get in touch with Daniel. Is he alright?”
Eleanor closed to a more comfortable speaking distance. Tamara kept at her shoulder. “That’s a complicated question,” Eleanor said. “Can you tell me what you know about him being a contractor?”
“I didn’t know,” James said. “He never told me, or Felix. We only found out the other day, along with everyone else. Did he get hurt? Is he safe?”
“He’s in one piece,” Eleanor said. Not exactly safe, but alive. “I won’t forget what he did for us in New York.”
