Two Wrong's Chapter 1

By

Jason Wilhelm

and

Bryan Nickelberry

Chapter 1

Sunlight glistening through the exposed windows caused Shahara to toss and turn until she couldn’t

take it anymore. Hiding under the covers obviously wasn’t working so she decided to just call it a morning.

Pulling the blankets away from her face, Shahara dealt with the expected moment of blindness in the sunlight. As she shielded her eyes from the “Day Star’s” death rays; it dawned on her that the window was also open. If Strayer’s apartment weren’t on the third floor, and she were more sane, she might have been embarrassed about the possibility of last night’s activities being seen. But instead, Shahara sat up in the bed, pulling the covers against her body with her artificial arm as she rubbed the last of the sleep from her eyes with her organic hand. Then she chuckled, wondering who she was trying to kid; she wouldn’t have cared if it happened in the middle of the day on the ground floor with an audience cheering them on.

Looking down at Strayer (who was still fast asleep and snoring beyond all belief) Shahara felt a feeling she wasn’t used to. She couldn’t explain it, but it did feel good, and the good feeling was spreading through her body. Strayer’s short blond hair was a mess, he was drooling from the corner of his mouth, and the covers just barely covered his butt. What she found attractive in this image was something beyond rational in her mind, but she couldn’t deny her feelings. And that’s what made the next part so much harder.

She glanced over at her phone to see the flashing light indicating a notification waiting for her. With her free arm she reached over and picked it up, already sure of the message’s nature. Swiping her finger across the cold glass surface revealed a text from her second least favorite person. ‘WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?’ was the first text, followed by ‘YOU’RE 45 MINUTES LATE!’ Before she could put the phone down from the first two texts, her phone buzzed to announce yet another message, consisting of only one word this time: ‘NOW.’

Shahara was still struggling with the fact that she had agreed to work for the Ego Blaster, even though the promised reward for putting up with his self-absorbed ass was almost worth it. She looked over at the night stand on Strayer’s side of the bed and saw the magical amulet he usually wore around his neck laying there. Ego Blaster’s deal was supposed to be simple. Shahara was to liberate the amulet, and temporarily provide it to Ego Blaster “for study” while she retrieved something which would supposedly make the amulet stronger. For completing the job, she’d be paid, and the stronger amulet would be returned to her. During the visit where Ego Blaster explained this to her, she’d caught more than a few glimpses at books he’d left open, and raw materials he’d gathered, and she’d guessed the truth: that Ego Blaster was planning to make one or more duplicates of the power enhancing amulet. Heck, one of those duplicates might even be her payment.

She hadn’t been sure about the deal, or Ego Blaster’s motives; but then Ego Blaster made the mistake of bragging to Shahara about the power he’d gained from some of the books that had been passed down through his family. Shahara had felt like something in her head was unlocking as she’d glanced at the open books. She couldn’t explain how she’d understood what she’d seen; but just as she’d understood Ego Blaster’s intentions, she’d known that a few of the spells she’d seen could be quite advantageous.

Shahara realized that she hadn’t moved. That she was still staring at the amulet. An amulet that wasn’t necessary to either herself, or Ego Blaster… An amulet that was all Strayer had. The boost it provided to people with powers was impressive, but without the amulet Strayer had no powers. The warm feeling from before went away, as she realized just how wrong it felt for her to steal the amulet from Strayer. And that was saying a lot coming from her.

Shahara’s head started pounding as she bent down to grab her clothes from the floor. Strong alcohol and little sleep did not agree with her. She stayed hunched over for a few more seconds to regain her composure before slipping back into her clothing. She felt the phone buzz in her pocket once again but sighed, and decided to ignore it since it would just be Ego Blaster again.

Shahara walked over to Strayer’s side of the bed and grabbed his amulet from the nightstand. In its place she left a note explaining what was going on and why she was doing it. She shook her head as it occurred to her that normally she wouldn’t do anything like this. (Leaving a note!?!) But for this one man, she found herself doing and feeling things that she would never do or feel for anyone else. She decided to leave before she abandoned the whole idea for the warmth of the bed… Which was looking more and more enticing every second.

Shahara made her way out of the apartment, down the two flights of stairs and into the sunny spring morning. ‘Late morning to be exact…’ Shahara thought as she looked at her buzzing phone again.

Shahara looked down at the ground as she made her way down the street; both to keep her gaze off the other people out and about (She disliked people in general and on principle), and to protect her eyes from the burning sun. These were just a few of the reasons why she preferred to work at night.

She made her way to an old abandoned factory building, once used to hand make furniture for an upstart company that didn’t survive the recession. Moving to a back door in the alley to keep wandering eyes from following her in, Shahara found a small office with the windows boarded up. Pulling a small leather-bound book from an inner pocket of her cloak, she flipped through the pages of different sigils. Ego Blaster had been kind enough to provide her a few sigils to help her travel from one point to another quickly, before giving her a five minute course on spell-casting to make them work. Shahara smiled, knowing it wasn’t because Ego Blaster was a nice guy, but because he didn’t want her to know the exact location of their meeting place. Worse, given the language he’d used during the lesson, Shahara suspected that five minutes of information was all Ego Blaster knew about this type of magic. At first Shahara had been completely against the idea of using magic, but it sure beat the other ideas he had to keep her in the dark. She shuddered, remembering a few of the offers he’d made while smiling wide.

Shahara found the correct sigil and began to cast the spell. It took her a couple of tries, but she finally got it right when she grabbed the sigil and heard the air around her start to make a hissing sound. She held the book up in front of her, triple checking the sigil as the hissing started to get louder and louder until it was more of a screech. Then she snapped the book shut and released the sigil. Her hangover had her in no mood for Ego Blaster’s way of doing things.

Rolling around different things in her mind, including some of the things that felt wrong as she’d been tracing the sigil, and a few of the things she’d seen in Ego Blaster’s books, Shahara began again. She added flourishes where she felt they should be as she traced the symbol in the air, kept her end goal in mind, and once she’d finished tracing, she moved her hand back, allowing the red and blue parts of the symbol to slowly fade to gold.

The whole process only took about ten seconds, but she smiled as she realized that the spell felt right. Wrapping her hand around the symbol, Shahara gave a gentle push, and stepped forward, finding her foot landing on the floor of Ego Blaster’s lavishly decorated entryway. Shahara kept smiling as she continued past the secretary, and down a brightly lit hallway. Looks like Ego Blaster had yet another new secretary, one who had yet to discover just what kind of man Ego Blaster really was. But she’d learn. At the end of the hallway, a pair of double doors were wide open, inviting Shahara to walk right in.

Sitting behind an overly large desk was Ego Blaster, with his arms crossed and a look on his face that would freeze an average person in their tracks. But Shahara was not average and kept walking, reaching into her pocket to grab the amulet as she went.

“I didn’t hear you come in with the teleport magic I taught you. I understand: It’s too advanced for you. But I’m not threatened by you figuring out where I am either, and walking in through the front door doesn’t excuse your lateness. It’s about time you got your lazy ass here. You’re lucky I don’t deal with you like the rest of the people who made the mistake of keeping me waiting.” Ego Blaster said, standing up from his lavish chair.

“Oh get over yourself, I’ve brought you what you wanted, isn’t that enough?” asked Shahara.

“First of all, you don’t talk to me until I’m done.” Ego Blaster said, pointing at Shahara. “Secondly, you don’t take that tone with me. You work for me, which means you talk with respect once I pause for you to answer. Third, Who raised you? Do you not have even the smallest bit of courtesy to answer back to a simple text message, or is that too much to ask of you?” Ego Blaster continued, ignoring what Shahara had just said.

“Oh there’s a bright idea, text the woman with only one good usable hand, but then again, that would require you to think about someone else other than yourself!” Shahara shot back.

“Bad news: This is the future. Your phone has text to speak, and like most women you obviously have no trouble talking.” Ego Blaster said, walking forward, and adjusting his suit jacket. “A man in my position cannot afford to wait for inept minions, such as you, to show up late; then expect it to be alright because they somehow managed to accomplish a menial task, which should’ve taken only an hour at most.” Ego Blaster said, stopping less than two feet from Shahara. Somehow, Ego Blaster had managed to catch her off guard with his ‘minion’ comment, making it seem like she was just an average lackey that he could boss around. Shahara had half a mind to slap him across the face for that comment, but decided against it.

“I’m a consultant or a contractor at worst, not one of your everyday stooges.” Shahara responded. Ego Blaster had a smirk forming on his smug face, clearly thinking that he had gotten to Shahara. And in reality, he had.

“Hand me the amulet.” Ego Blaster said unnecessarily, holding out his gauntlet-clad hand dramatically. Shahara pulled the amulet from her pocket and considered throwing it at him, but he grabbed it from her hand and walked back towards his desk. He paused long enough only to grab a piece of parchment off the desk and toss it back to Shahara without even looking to see if it made it to her. Shahara started out impressed as the paper flew straight toward her, it must’ve been enchanted. Then it took a very obvious turn straight down, landing about two feet from her. Clenching her teeth, Shahara bent down in silence and grabbed the paper, only to see that it was another sigil. Most likely her next destination.

“The other piece of the amulet that I promised you is at that location; and if you’re so smart, then actually use what I taught you to get there.” Ego Blaster said, turning and sitting as he smiled. “Find it, then bring it back here in one piece, and maybe I’ll consider giving you the pay that you should have earned.” Ego Blaster said, looking back down at Strayer’s amulet. Shahara turned and walked out the door, not waiting to dignify his comment with a response.

*******

Ego Blaster waited a few minutes to make sure Shahara was well on her way; then after hearing no bangs or screeches to accompany the teleportation method he taught her Ego Blaster shrugged before setting down the amulet, pressing a button to close his office doors, and picking up his phone. After typing in a handful of numbers, he put the phone to his ear and waited for an answer on the other end. It didn’t take long before he heard the click on the other end.

“She’s on her way to you now, just as I promised.” Ego Blaster said into his phone.

Several seconds passed in silence. “Good.” was all he heard before the familiar sound of static came back, indicating that the other party was done with their conversation. Ego Blaster set his phone back down on his desk, then pursed his lips and glared at the phone.

There were very few things in this world or most others that really bothered him, but phone calls to the Silent Partner always did the trick. Most agents Ego Blaster had sent to investigate “the Partner” hadn’t returned, and the little information his very best agents had come back with conflicted. Catching Shahara looking at his father’s books and talking like she understood them, was all the reason he needed to send her after the most well-guarded of the six known secondary amulet components on Earth, rather than the least-defended one. Ego Blaster picked the amulet up again, still mildly disappointed that Shahara had been telling the truth about it attuning to only one person per lifetime. Then he shrugged. Either the Partner would eliminate Shahara’s presumptuous ass, and possibly report back with findings about her powers as a way of thanks for the test subject; or Shahara would somehow return successful, no doubt with the Partner’s severed head in one hand, and the other half of the amulet in her other, to receive payment and be on her way. Ego Blaster couldn’t lose, and deals with that quality were his favorite kind to make.

*****

On the other side of the teleportation spell, Shahara stumbled as her foot sank to the knee into the snow and she wished she’d been warned to bring warmer clothing for the mission. Looking up at the foreboding white building before her, she noticed armed men in uniform looking at her. Great. The guards stayed right where they were, not even bringing their guns up to react to someone materializing out of thin air right in front of them, which seemed odd to Shahara until she realized what was going on; Ego Blaster had set her up. She may have been mad about being sent into a blizzard without warning, but now she was really angry, and it must have showed on her face because the guards in front of her were becoming a little more suspicious, a couple of them even pulling up their guns and aiming them at her.

One of the guards said something to her that she obviously didn’t understand, and after he repeated himself while pointing a strange weapon at her, she could only imagine they wanted her to surrender herself. Seeing that she didn’t have much of a choice here, she slowly started raising her hands as she assessed her situation. She didn’t have enough time to cast a teleportation spell now, but if she could put a little distance between herself and her captors, she just might be able to do it. She would have to be quick though, as she was only getting colder in this frigid winter wonderland. It took a little more effort to keep her concentration in this cold weather, but imagining the beating she was going to put on Ego Blaster when she got herself out of this mess was enough to help her summon Shadow.

The gentle breeze blowing the snow around was enough to hide the change in her eyes from their normal green to a brilliant white while it wasn’t as easy for Shadow to hide even in the late afternoon storm. The guards had managed to circle around Shahara and as soon as Shadow appeared, one of the guards pulled out the strange weapon that Shahara had seen earlier and struck her with it. The sudden and painful electrical shock to the back was more than enough info to figure out what the mystery weapon was as she wriggled around in pain from the electricity shooting through her body. The pain suddenly stopped as Shadow pushed his way past the two guards firing their automatic weapons at him and threw the one with the electric shocker into a tree ten feet away. Shahara was still on her hands and knees, pulling the last of her energy just to keep Shadow summoned even through the electrical shock attack. Two of the guards had gotten back up and used their electrical weapons on Shadow which caused Shadow to phase in and out of physical existence, which shouldn’t have been possible and was giving Shahara one heck of a headache. Shahara had no choice but to let Shadow go and his sudden disappearance only gave Shahara a small window of opportunity. She mustered up the remaining bit of her strength, pulled a couple of throwing knives from her thigh, and threw them at the two guards who had previously attacked Shadow, plunging them into the back of the neck of one, and into the temple of the other, dropping them both instantly.

Shahara took a second to re summon Shadow which took most of her energy. Shahara wanted really badly to be pissed about her current situation, but the air chilled her to the bone and the electric shock weapon had a little more power than she would have ever expected. She was finding it increasingly difficult to hold her concentration enough just to keep Shadow by her side let alone carving a path through the snow. Behind them in the distance, Shahara could hear the high revving sounds of multiple vehicles racing to the area they had showed up at and the slight glow of headlights were starting towards their direction. They were only about a hundred yards from the forest line, but in these conditions, they would never make it there before the vehicles approached. Shadow even tried putting his arm around Shahara and when that proved useless, he even tried to carry Shahara, which she didn’t like at all. Time was running out and Shahara wasn’t going to be able to keep Shadow here for much longer. Shadow sat Shahara back down on the ground, kneeled down in front of her and looked into her exhausted face and stared into her eyes. They both knew what was coming next and that there was nothing they could do about it. Shadow disappeared from Shahara’s vision as it was slowly replaced by the bright headlights of the pursuing vehicles. Their unintelligible words of warning feel deaf on her ears as she dropped face first into the snow, passing out and depriving them of the chance of using their shock weapons on her.