Spell Robbers by Matthew J. Kirby Read Free Book Online Page B

Taggart said. “It should look familiar to you.” She cupped her hand to her mouth. “Clear!”
    The room resumed motion. People took up positions. Ben felt something change in the air. Then fireballs flew. Ice. Lightning. Blasts of wind. The girl with the black-blue hair smirked at Ben before launching a baseball-sized rock from a pile into the air like a bullet. Ben glanced at Peter, whose wide eyes and open mouth looked how Ben felt. Actuation . This was an actuation training room.
    Except, Ben didn’t see any augmenting equipment. He looked around, along the walls, up into the heavy timber rafters that stretched across the ceiling. Nothing. It seemed that every person in that room was actuating on his or her own.
    Agent Taggart waited a moment longer, and then motioned for Ben and Peter to follow her through another door. Ben didn’t want to leave. Peter didn’t move, either. He just stared. But Agent Spear shepherded them forward, and they soon stood in a quiet hallway.
    “Quantum Agents,” Peter whispered. “Now it makes sense. But —”
    “Let’s finish this in the library.” Agent Spear took the lead again, and they followed him down a few more turns into a room that was smaller than the one they’d just been in, but larger than the room where they’d started. Empty wooden shelves lined the walls — was it still a library if it didn’t have any books? — and a couple of conference tables rested in the middle of the room, surrounded by high-backed wooden chairs. They each took a seat.
    “What is this place?” Ben asked.
    “It used to be a church,” Agent Spear said. “They were going to tear it down, but the League moved in before they could.”
    “So this is your headquarters?” Peter asked.
    “One of them,” Agent Taggart said. “The League is a global agency. We monitor quantum activity around the world and make sure groups like the Dread Cloaks don’t get too powerful or cause too much trouble. We stop them when we can.”
    Ben thought back to what the leader of the Dread Cloaks had done to the computer in Dr. Hughes’s lab. “Can they all … well, Dr. Hughes called it actuation?”
    Agent Taggart nodded. “That is the scientific term we use as well. Although, you may occasionally hear an older agent still calling it magic. But that’s usually as a joke. As for the Dread Cloaks, yes. Most of them can actuate, to varying degrees.”
    “Does the government know about them?” Ben asked. “Or, you guys?”
    “No,” Agent Spear said.
    “How is that possible?” Peter asked.
    “That’s the funny thing about actuation,” Agent Spear said. “Ennays have a hard time seeing it.”
    “Ennays?” Ben asked.
    “Non-Actuators,” Agent Taggart said. “N-A’s. Most people who cannot actuate don’t really perceive it. It is a part of reality they are blind to, just like you’re blind to infrared light. They see the aftermath of actuation, but they attribute it to other things. Freak storms. Freak accidents. Spontaneous combustion. That kind of thing.”
    “Another term for Ennays you might hear is Imps,” Agent Spear said. “Short for impotent . Powerless. But that’s an insult, so don’t go picking it up.”
    But Ben thought back to how Dr. Hughes had trained them. “If Dr. Hughes is an Ennay, how does she see it?”
    “Her equipment allows her to perceive it,” Agent Taggart said. “Like you wearing infrared goggles.”
    “Which brings us back to the attack,” Agent Spear said. “Poole is in charge of the Dread Cloaks, and for him to personally head up an operation means there was something very important in that lab. And with Dr. Hughes.”
    Agent Spear scratched absently with a fingernail at the deep grain of the table. “You boys know what that might be?”
    “They wanted her portable augmenter,” Peter said.
    “Portable?” Agent Taggart’s voice turned sharp. “Was it functional?”
    “I don’t know, I didn’t …” Peter turned to Ben.
    So did both