House of Snakes
“I believe in one thing only, the power of human will.” – Joseph Stalin
Nadia finished polishing the wooden stand, then placed the urn upon it.
Sitting down to her station. She felt more at home here and spent more time here than her apartment.
Sitting her sunglasses down on her station that she removed from her purse, she slowly removed a chip from the frame.
Inserting the chip into The Beast, Nadia exclaimed “Pythia, go over the data on this micro sd. I want to know everything possible about each face captured.”
“Ada, I will begin this task. Though you should know I have detected several attempts at our perimeter of the building while you were gone.” Pythia replied in her electronic voice.
With a heavy sigh, Ada brought up video feeds from around the ‘abandoned’ building she operated out of. “Ada, there is no video or audio of the contacts around the building only this…” Pythia explained and changed Ada’s view to seismic sensor data. Ada review all the sensors closely, she cross-referenced the instances with time stamps on the video and audio data collected by her self-built security system. Sure, enough Pythia was right. The only data captured was seismic.
Ada stood up and stepped away from her station. As she walked back toward the north wall lights flickered to life via automatic sensors. The lights were a very low lumen as not to bleed through the blacked out and faraday reinforced large industrial wall windows. When she reached the lockers on the wall she quickly looked in a locker mirror at herself.
“Nadia, why are you doing this?” Ada asked the image of her and Nadia in the mirror as if expecting herself to respond.
She opened the locker and reached in; her hand latching onto several note books. Pulling a five-subject notebook with yellow, orange, red, as well as blue index tabs on the exposed side of the notebook; she scans the tabs and opens one of the red ones.
Scanning through the pages Ada finally lands on text she was searching for. Highlighted in red highlighter the dark text was written in a very sloppy cursive hand style. Ada mumbled ever so slightly as she read over the writing. Quickly she replaced the notebook, closed the locker, and opened a large six-foot floor to top locker. Here she grabbed a large jar marked Wych Salt. Opening the jar, she then started to spread slight sprinkles of the salt around the entire floor she worked on at the seam of the walls. Afterwards she sprinkled some around the entrance to the stair well. Sealing the jar, she walked back and replaced it in the locker.
“Ada, I have a dossier on the gentleman who you witnessed in the hallway at the funeral home.” Pythia announced.
“Go ahead, brief me.” Ada stated as she walked back to her station.
Suddenly the power went off. The entire floor went black, not even emergency lighting came on.
“Pythia, status.” Ada said as softly and low toned as possible.
No response forced Ada to go into her emergency procedures. Knowing every foot of her space, she counted her steps and turned on queue to approach the door to the stair well. The door had gone into siege lock, and the magnetic locks she had placed on the door made it impossible to open while power was out. With the grace and skill of a ninja, she quietly counted her steps and direction to a wall mounted fire extinguisher box. Removing the fake carboard image of an extinguisher, she quietly pulled a pistol and two extra clips of ammunition from the hooks on the back of the extinguisher box. Sliding the two spare clips into her back pocket; she then placed her back against the wall and slid down into a crouch. Her thumb finding the safety and clicking it off.
As if the click was a sound calling out to the ether for whatever was happening to execute right then; a bright blueish-white large ball of light appeared in the center of the open floor. Aiming the gun in the direction with her right hand and shielding her eyes with her left arm; Ada could barely make out two figures walking out of the light.
Realizing this was an entirely bad strategic situation she quickly moved position to have a fluffy cloth recliner chair between her and the new sight in her hideout. As the light faded she placed her right hand with the pistol in line with the arm of the chair. Resting her aim on the arm, she knew the gun was pointing generally in the correct direction; she also knew using the chair to shield any more blinding light meant she would not be able to aim.
“Nadia!” a loud booming voice exclaimed.
In a moment of stunned mental transactions, Ada could not move. Someone yelling her real name was shock enough combined with the blinding entry. Added to this the chair was slung to the left slamming loudly into a wall and obviously cracking a window based on the sound. Almost at the same time she felt herself spin to the right as the pistol was forced out of her hand and slid across the floor hitting another wall and discharging a single round. Prone, face down, all Ada no definitely Nadia, could think was a fast string of curse words and exasperation.
Two individuals walked up to her one on her right the other on her left. A large black hand reached down to her followed by a much softer and none threating “Nadia, we wish you no harm, you figured out my clue apparently and Pythia knows too much for your good.” a male voice spoke.
“Yeah, he didn’t think you would discover so much so easily. He is good at underestimating us.” A snarky female voice stated as a soft hand grasped Nadia’ from her left.
Accepting both, she was pulled to her feet, a snapping noise to her left and the power blinked back on.
“The man at the funeral home is named…” Pythia was interrupted by Ada “Pythia cease prior request, we have company.” Ada managed to get out.
The male voice chimed in “Thank you, Nadia. You shall learn all you want; however, I must request the access to our systems and the data collected be expunged. “
“No problem, after I get some answers…” Nadia stated while dusting herself off and walking directly to where the pistol had slid. Shaken, off balance, and refusing to show any of this or her fear; she picked the pistol up, turned the safety back on and slid it in the small of her back between her belt and shirt.
“Let’s talk.” Nadia then said staring right had the two individuals who were dressed in casual garb, loose t-shirts and jeans.
Static Magick aka Soulbound Heart
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