Stacia Kane - Finding Magic

She managed to catch a few glimpses over his shoulder, mentions of attitude and paranoia. Maybe someone had sat down and discussed Mark the way Jillian had discussed her with Elder Griffin. Maybe they’d talked about how he wasn’t a team player and he was standoffish and made enemies easily.

Whether they had or not, Mark didn’t seem very pleased by what he read. “Assholes. Snobs.”

He pulled something out of his pocket—it looked like a flash drive—and turned to Jillian. “How do I change things? How do I change the system?”

“What?” Jillian had been dozing off; at his questions she jerked upright and blinked. “What—what do you want to do?”

“You gave me the file password. I want the system password, to get in and change things. And I want to log in to your email.”

Chess waited for Jillian to object. Jillian didn’t. She just clicked more keys with that dumbass spacy smile plastered across her face. Chess really, really wanted to believe that Jillian was faking it, that while Chess worked the Hey, man, I’m just like you and we can be cool pals together united against the Man angle, Jillian was working on some sort of sneak attack. But every second that went by convinced her more and more that that wasn’t the case, and it made her sick. She really was going to have to figure this out on her own.

Fast, because she knew without a doubt that he’d kill her when he was done, kill Jillian, too. Why leave them alive when he hadn’t done so for the Rosses—or the Warings, or, hell, his own parents? No, the way he looked at her, the way he waved that gun around and the cold fire in his eyes, told her exactly what he was planning. She had about five more minutes to live.

And she had no usable weapons, no way to escape. No way to beat him; he had the gun, he had the power. All the power.

Fuck, she was sick of it. Sick of people thinking they could just control her, use her. Sick of being the weak one, the powerless one, the one who just had to take whatever shit was handed to her, whatever shit was done to her, because she had nothing of her own to beat them with. Sick of being who she was, and even though the pill meant she didn’t feel that as much—was able to block it, hide it—she was still fucking sick of it, and weariness and rage rose in her chest. She’d thought … she’d thought working for the Church would give her something, some kind of power of her own, and here she was still at the mercy of some sick fuck with a weapon.

Her chest hurt. Her throat hurt. It was happening again—she was nothing. She was no one. Even the Church couldn’t change that, and every bit of work she’d done over the last three years, every bit of work she’d done on this case, only put her right at the front of the use-me line. And she couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t help herself. The Church couldn’t help her. Even the magic she’d been learning to use couldn’t help her, the knowledge she’d gained in training—

Or could it?

No, she couldn’t beat Mark. Jillian couldn’t do it, not in her condition. And no one was showing up who could help her.

But there was something that could help her. Something—some things— that could beat Mark easily, overwhelm him.

Of course, they could do the same for her. Probably would. But that didn’t matter so much, not just then. What mattered was that whatever Mark was trying to do, it wasn’t something she should allow. No, she was still who she was, still a failure and a weakling and someone who didn’t deserve to be happy. But the Church had tried. It had tried to do something for her, to make her something, and if she’d fucked up the opportunity it wasn’t their fault. It was hers. Just like everything else.

The thought of the City terrified her. But the thought of a world where no living people survived was even worse. And the thought of standing there and letting the people who’d tried to help her, who’d given her a chance, be beaten and destroyed?

No. No way.

So fuck Mark. Fuck him and his plan, fuck him and his idea that she was nothing, just a tool for him to use.

Besides, he was going to kill her anyway. She might as well try to make that death mean something, accomplish something. Maybe if she did it would prove that somewhere inside her there really was something good.

Maybe.

She licked her lips; her mouth was so dry. “Why are you bothering with the computers?”

“What?” He glanced up at her, annoyance all over his face, like how dare she interrupt the genius at work. “What the fuck do you know?”

“I was just wondering. Messing with the computers isn’t going to do anything, it’s not going to hurt the Church. Everything is backed up in a different system. They’ll just restore everything tomorrow.”

“They won’t be able to. This is going to fry all the hard drives.”

“But only of those computers. Or of people who open the email. That’s only here in Triumph City, I mean, none of the other offices in other cities will be affected, right?”

“It’s a multiplying virus.” He still looked annoyed, yes, but he was beginning to look doubtful. Good. Better than good.

She pushed harder. “But still, that’s only going to affect them here, in-house. Nobody’s ever going to find out about it, I mean, it’s not going to really hurt them. Trust me, I’ve learned a few things about them since I got here. There’s really only one place where they’re vulnerable.”

“Where?”

Okay. Throw it out there. “The City.”

His brow furrowed. “How is that going to—”

“Open it up. Let them out.”

“And be killed? No thanks.”

“Why would you be killed?” She widened her eyes, tried to look stunned at the very idea. “You can control them. Church employees go down there safely every day, and you’re stronger than most of us are. Look how you controlled the ghosts you summoned. They didn’t attack you.”

“That was only three of them.”

She shrugged. “Hey, if you don’t think you’re good enough, that’s fine. I just thought you really wanted to get back at them. At all of them—not just the Church but everyone.”

His eyes narrowed. “You think I just want to hurt people.”

“No! No, not at all. But come on. You know how mean people can be. How disrespectful. Isn’t it about time they all see how strong you really are? That while they’ve been discounting you, you’ve been more powerful and smarter than any of them?”

It hurt to say it. It hurt to realize how shitty that sounded, how much she knew he was thinking exactly that because she’d thought it. Because she’d thought, when she started training, that this would be her chance to show every person who’d ever hurt her that she could survive, that she could make something of herself far beyond anything they’d ever managed.

If she’d believed that, and if Mark believed it … just how fucking different was she from him? And he was scum. So what did that say about her?

“I am more powerful than they are. I am. I don’t need to prove it.”

“But if you don’t, how will they know?”

He hesitated. Time to turn the screw.

She shrugged again, looked away. Indifferent. “Hey, if you don’t think you can do it, that’s fine. Just put in your computer virus and be done with it. I just think it’d be better to really make them pay, really show them what a mistake they made, is all.”

He stood up. Had the gun’s barrel widened, because it sure as hell looked bigger than it had before. Or maybe it was just the anger on his face making it so much more threatening. “I can do it. Don’t tell me I can’t do it. You have no idea what I can do, you little bitch.”