Interlude XI — The Seven Thirty-Six Train to Seattle

On the Tuesday morning train from Redmond to Seattle, on November the twenty-seventh, two thousand eighteen, at the very rear of the final car, a heated discussion was brewing in hushed voices.

"Did you hear? Another person from Lakewood died. Kaneesha Davis."

"No…"

"Never recovered from the roof falling on her spine. I heard she was in constant pain for the last two weeks."

"God… That's horrible."

"And they still haven't arrested anyone responsible. It's insane."

"Nobody?"

"No one."

"What about that girl? Hailey Winscombe. They arrested her right off the plane in D.C. yesterday."

"There was a whole army in Lakewood. She's just a kid. This is way bigger."

"Come on—an army?"

"Look at these pictures, man. Helicopters coming in, guys rappelling down to the ground. Look at the videos. That's full-auto gunfire going up against these monsters."

"So they're the good guys, then, right?"

"If they are, why haven't they come forward? They're probably just as responsible. Both sides are the same. We're all just stuck in the middle."

"I'm definitely not on the side that has those monsters…"

"So you're on the side that was blowing up houses? They found leftover explosives buried in some of those buildings. It wasn't magic."

"No… I don't know…"

"I don't either, but I'm not sitting around waiting to get killed because of the awakened."

"You think it's real? They can really do magic?"

"Can or can't, they're still getting us normal people killed. I wish they'd all just—"

"Don't say that!"

"Why not?"

"They're still people… aren't they?"

"Who says? We don't know what they are. We know they blew up Rallsburg, and a bunch of people got killed. Hailey Winscombe keeps blowing up buildings wherever she goes. They're dangerous."

"...I'm scared."

"You and me both."

"What are we supposed to do about it though?"

"I don't know… but I can't just sit around and go to work every day like nothing's wrong."

"They ought to be locked up."

"How? We don't even know who they are."

"Excuse me, but I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. There is a way."

"...Who are you?"

"I'm Mike. I'm just as worried as you are, believe me. But like I said, there's a way."

"What way?"

"You heard about that guy on TV, right? The one they said was the enemy. Brian Hendricks."

"Yeah. I heard he's a murderer."

"Well, I don't know about that, but I do know he's the only one who's making any sense right now."

"...You know him?"

"I wouldn't say I know him. I've never talked to him. But I've listened to him speak."

"You have?"

"He's going to be speaking again tonight. There's an old church on the west side of Olympia, on Jenkins Road. Near the school."

"When?"

"Hang on, you never said what way."

"We can find them. There's a way to test if someone is one of these awakened. Easy and harmless. I tested the both of you, actually, and you didn't even notice."

"You did?"

"How?"

Alden Bensen warily opened one eye, staring down to the end of the car. He tensed up, hand in his pocket, grasping the ruby and topaz gems stuffed inside. Alden didn't recognize the two men or the woman holding the conversation. One man was leaning forward, his hand outstretched—holding a small smooth stone with etchings on the surface.

...Oh, no.

Very slowly, Alden began to shift his weight, putting more on to his feet. His legs were asleep—he'd been sleeping on the way into Seattle. Trains just did that to him. It was the only place he ever got any real sleep, in fact—a month away from home, and he hadn't gotten any better since leaving Meg behind on his insane quest to find Rika... and some answers.

The train announced the next stop. Alden breathed a sigh of relief—and they looked up at him.

Don't move. Act like nothing's wrong. Don't look away too quickly. Alden tried to remember everything he'd read by Boris on the website. He wasn't even in hiding, really, but he'd still read every single piece of advice from the old spy.

To his relief, after only a couple seconds, the group looked away again. The man pocketed the stone as the train glided to a halt. They busied themselves gathering up bags, still talking about the meeting that night. The other two sounded truly interested now.

Alden debarked as quickly as he dared, not taking a single look back.

A month had passed since he left home, and Alden still felt awful every time he glanced at the news.

Inevitably, it would be something about Hailey, or Cinza, or Jessica, or any combination of news about the awakened, the United States, London, and the confluence of events which had brought them into their current hurricane of insanity. An intense mixture of guilt and fear churned in his stomach, never quite going away. He hadn't seen any of them in so long—and, in fact, the news was marking that very timeline for him now.

"I'd like to remind you of the events last month on Friday, October 26th, which we can now assume was Hailey Winscombe fighting with agents of Brian Hendricks, whom Cinza accused in London over the weekend."

"What about it?"

"Well, the police officers involved are certainly vindicated now, aren't they? The same golems were caught on camera in the Battle of Lakewood, and nothing contradicts Cinza's story thus far. That was an attack by Brian Hendricks, presumably aimed right at Hailey Winscombe and whomever was with her in the bar that night."

"I'll contradict it. I think Brian Hendricks is just a scapegoat. He's currently driving an anti-magic campaign in the Pacific Northwest, but apparently nobody can find him. It doesn't make any sense that he'd have magical aid. How would he keep his supporters in line if he's openly hypocritical?"

"Means to an end?"

Alden had called Hailey. Not at first—he caught the first few updates, when she appeared in front of the law firm, on the talk show, down in Portland. After the Battle of Lakewood, he'd been busy following what ended up as a dead-end—a lead on a Japanese girl named Maria in Redmond. It took him a few days to link the car chase origin with Rika, and by that time, Hailey was already in London, while Alden had completely missed Jessica's funeral.

He checked in with Meg daily. It wasn't much—Alden would send her a text saying roughly where he was and that he was fine. Meg gave him space. She made it clear she didn't have a clue why he was going through his "mid-early-post-high-school-life-crisis", but she still respected it. Alden didn't know what alien had gone and replaced his annoying little sister, but he was glad for it nonetheless.

When he'd heard about Jessica's death… he cried all night. He'd wanted to call Hailey, but she was already in London. He'd called Meg instead, not really knowing anyone else in their little community well enough. The only two people he'd ever held a longer conversation with were Rachel—who nobody seemed to have heard from her in ages—and Ryan, who… well, Alden just didn't know Ryan that well.

Meg cried right along with him. She told him about the funeral, about Hailey's outburst and flight, about how the rest of them just left mostly in silence after she'd vanished. They both missed her. It was the first time Meg had asked Alden to come home. She was afraid, now that someone she actually knew had died. It was the first time she'd ever experienced loss. Except for some abstract feeling of abandonment by their long-lost and forgotten older sibling, they'd been lucky up until that year.

The year of magic. The year of Rallsburg. The year of the awakened.

Alden wondered what event the historians would pick to mark the year. So much had happened, and so much was continuing to happen. How much more crazy can the world get? At this rate, Alden wasn't about to rule anything out.

He started down the street, heading deeper into the downtown Seattle area. Alden was there to investigate, following up on a lead toward Rika. He'd promised Meg this was the last one. If this didn't pan out, or if he got into any trouble, he was heading home. He had no idea what he was going to tell his parents, nor how Meg was possibly covering for him for so long. They had his number, but neither had reached out beyond unanswered well-wishes every week or so.

Alden had to find her. It was an obsession at this point. He knew that somehow, his life had been completely shattered by magic. He had no friends, he had no connections outside his family. The only people he knew in the world were those he'd met that year. Rika had called it fate, and Rika had taught him everything he knew about magic.

She'd have the answers he needed. He had to believe that.

A police report was beginning to circulate online. Alden found it on a paranoid "awakened conspiracy" website. Until recently, he'd been using leads from the private site set up by Cinza, but that had gone mysteriously silent. All at once, everyone had stopped posting, without warning. They stopped visiting it entirely, by the activity log. Alden followed suit, fearing it might be suddenly insecure. A day later, it vanished off the internet.

Cinza was the smartest person he knew with technology and the internet, through her connections to techie friends the world around. Alden doubted it was a technical fault. He was stuck reviewing public footage from the battle of Lakewood, seeing the vague glimpses of Hailey and the FBI agent, with Jessica clinging to Hailey at every turn. The later bits were much higher quality, but focused more on the two clashing armies of Brian's ragtag group and what Alden assumed to be Malton and Viper's men.

No wonder Hailey blitzed off to London…

The police report he'd found on the conspiracy site listed an incident in an abandoned warehouse downtown. Multiple deaths from severe electrical burns, no apparent cause. It was a longshot, but Alden knew Rika had been in the area. She'd been living in Redmond under the name Maria for a while. It was close enough to be worth checking out.

It would be another long, freezing walk through the city streets. The whole city felt deathly cold. Alden rubbed his hands together, concentrating on the molecules in the air around him. Gently, he began to push at them, mentally plucking them as if they were taut strings, setting them to vibrate.

A wave of warmth flooded in, filling up his coat and gloves. He grinned. I'm getting better at this. It used to take him minutes to actually find the strings and vibrate them. Alden had gotten it down to only a couple seconds.

The warehouse was at least ten blocks away, if not further. Alden didn't want to pull his hands out of the warmth to check, but he remembered the cross streets. He figured he'd just wander slowly in the right direction until he found one of them. There wasn't any rush. Alden doubted he'd find her, and as soon as he got there and saw nothing, he'd be heading home—empty-handed.

Alden didn't want to go home. He didn't want to face the empty room again.

Some thirty minutes later, he was there. Nothing had happened. The city bustled on as usual, and Alden simply walked through it. He found the street he needed. An angry-looking house cat hissed at him from an open window, diving back inside as he passed. Alden stopped halfway down the street, where an alley pointed the way inward, to a fenced-off building surrounded by CONDEMNED signs. A heavy iron door was half-ajar, small indentations visible in the metal near the handle.

The place was cordoned off. Officers were standing near every entrance, barriers in place, and they didn't even look bored. They weren't wearing Seattle uniforms, either.

...What's going on here?

Alden considered walking up to ask them, but there wasn't a single other person in sight. They didn't give him a second glance, and he decided to keep it that way. He kept moving, intending to circle around to the other side and pray that he might find some more answers there.

Nothing, of course. The warehouse only had the one entrance.

Alden fell back against the nearest wall, letting out a deep sigh. Guess that's it, then.

He pulled out his phone, glancing through his list of contacts. Every single one said "offline", since their server was still down, but he could pull up old messages. Alden wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he needed something—anything to give him a reason not to go home yet. Anything to show he hadn't completely failed.

There was a message from Lily Laushire. She'd sent a thank-you a few months earlier, recognizing him for helping stop Jackson and save their lives. Alden had deleted it, feeling too broken up at the time to even read it, but the server downloaded it again anyway. More importantly, the message included the address of their new office in Seattle, with an open invitation to visit if he ever needed anything.

The office wasn't that far away. Alden set off.