Her gaze was glued on the moon-like structure, stagnant in its orbit, that used both magic and massive power to run the gravity plates that kept both the Meligorns and the others firmly on their feet. It constituted a towering one hundred and forty-two decks, one hundred and thirty-six of them filled with maneuvering and reverberating spacecraft. The middle six decks were reserved for those passengers who passed from energy to magic on their way to and from the ensorcelled planet of Meligorn.

  Stephanie had only ever viewed the station from books and small 3D renditions through her headsets at school. While she had read of the magnitude of the project, she only became aware of its lumbering mechanical presence over the Brahmin planet below from her vantage point in the stars. It was a stark contrast, magnificent in structure and theory. The ships that entered and exited seemed to flow seamlessly from clamp to avigation as if part of an invisible assembly line controlled by belts and robotic entities. The answer, however, was actually even more scientifically brilliant than that. These ships were manipulated via their weight and the technology that strained and confined them to one side of the structure or the other.

  To say that NorAm had lost ships to the Meligorn magical consumption of non-sortilege energy would be an understatement. Some were able to land before all the power was drained, while others crashed into the surface below. None of them were able to return from the fog of magic, so concessions had to be made. Those ships that maneuvered between the station and the surface docked on the lower half of the structure. Visiting normal-powered ships docked on the upper half outside the La Grange Point—the point in which the MU spectrum ceased and left a small pocket between it and the atmospheric cover and the dead of space beyond.

  As a small flash of light caught Stephanie’s attention, she realized her place among the stars. Her stomach dropped when she found the whole aspect of flying less exciting than it seemed from the safety of her own child-like imagination. As soon as her attention wavered, the system lurched into motion again—rather harshly this time—and stopped on the platform of the non-magical side. Her feet shuffled forward as if there really were momentum behind her. She glanced up toward the dark recesses, knowing that somewhere up there, the system admins were watching.

  “Hello,” an older NorAm diplomat said as he walked past, a book clutched at his waist.

  Stephanie nodded. “Hello.”

  They studied one another for a moment as they crossed paths. He headed for a docked ship and she approached the inside doors. She could tell the air was thin up there but still breathable by humans. The temperature was not what she expected either. That high into the atmosphere, it should be bitterly cold but for some reason, it was warm and breezy.

  You really need to get used to shit being different, she told herself as she stepped carefully along the platform that had no guardrails of any kind. She could feel the artificial gravity, a feeling that was similar to when she had fought on the ships at Pinnacle. This made maneuverability available at that height.

  She stepped through a set of sliding doors and into an open and bustling space. It had the quality of an old airport from a long time ago—restaurants, bars, and people wheeling suitcases as they hurried along, talking on their various devices. You could spot a Meligorn much easier than the humans because they tended to not let the anxiety of the travel affect them. Looking to her right, she could see that she was on level 0, the midpoint separating magical from non-magical.

  Her path brought her to several stairwells. Some led up through the towering building while others led downward toward Meligornian territory. The middle lay as a hub between. She wandered around for about fifteen system minutes and simply absorbed all the little detail of the station. Subtle NorAm historical texts were etched into the walls on one side and on the other, a strange-looking language belonging to the Meligorn.

  Suddenly, round service lights on the ceiling flashed and she could hear a voice mumble in the comm in her ear. She adjusted the sound in an effort to determine what was happening. “Security Breach Deck U-2. All hands on deck. Repeat. Security Breach on Deck U-2. All hands. All hands.”

  Stephanie smiled, glanced at her outfit, and raced toward the lift that loaded in front of her. She hopped on as it started to move up to the third floor. When it stopped, everyone on it screamed, ducked, and took cover from the unexpected shots that had erupted all around. Some idiot had messed up and everyone was in the middle of an all-out battle throughout the floor. She stepped out of the lift and dropped instinctively, and a blast of laser barely missed her.

  Quickly she turned and pointed toward a door to the right. “Go! Get out of here.”

  The group of people responded immediately and ran in a semi-crouched position with bended knees as they hurried, one by one, through the door and back down to level-0. Screams echoed and Stephanie turned as people were thrown by the blast of the guns, the bodies smoking. The structure consisted of two shells. An outer wall, thick but translucent, was a protection from the elements—something that shielded them from the battery of rocks and debris in space. The second was the inner structure. It was as strong if not stronger than the other but made of less costly materials, which meant that they were less resistant to heat and the impact of objects hurtling through space. It kept everyone safe, though—or in this circumstance, trapped—and it wasn’t appealing in the least.

  Stephanie automatically moved to retrieve her battery but her hand slipped down her leg. She looked down and realized that her outfit had been changed to a spandex-type jumpsuit. There were no pockets—and none of the batteries she had decided to bring in with her. “What the hell? I chose it and put it in my pocket.”

  She ducked and a piece of the wall behind her blew chunks of stone and dust into the air. It occurred to her that she didn’t have a gun and she groaned. She would have to depend on her hand-to-hand combat skills and figure out what the hell happened on her next visit. One thing was patently clear, however. This was not the time to simply stand around where she was.

  She shrugged and broke into a sprint to duck and weave through the long, wide terminal-like halls. To her right, an enemy with an enormous weapon trained it on her as she ran. He pulled the trigger and she fell back to extend one leg out with the other bent and slide along the surface. Her body arched back and her hair grazed the floor. Huge chunks of stone erupted from the walls and she managed to catch hold of the corner as she slid past and whipped herself up and around and out of harm’s way.

  As she found her feet, the enemy snorted and walked off, grumbling loudly. She put her hand to her chest and caught her breath. “That was a close one.”

  Her relief was short-lived, however. Small sections of her hair fluttered forward from large puffs of air. Cautiously, she turned and her eyes fixed on the massive girth in front of her. Her vision shifted ever so slowly upward. A huge chin belonged to a huge man, which in turn belonged to a very large body. They stared at each other for a moment before instinct clicked in and Stephanie lunged, using her fists in very calculated and defined movements.

  He blocked every throw and every kick and finally clutched her fist in a massive hand and shoved hard. She catapulted backward into the adjacent hall to land ignominiously on all fours. With a muttered groan, she shook the plaster from her hair and spat in an effort to remove it from her teeth. Her head whipped up and her eyes narrowed as she pushed to her feet and attacked with her arm poised in readiness.

  Suddenly, he drew a weapon almost as large as she was and aimed at her. Frustrated, she closed her eyes and tried desperately to think of a way to fight him. Before she could, however, he pulled the trigger and a blast of pain slammed into her stomach. Her whole body was launched into free-flight but instead of a painful impact with the wall, the system pulled her out and deposited her in the avatar room.

  The breath was heavy in her lungs as she stood gingerly to look for the expected injury. It had gone, but as she touched her abdomen, she grimaced. It was badly bruised but there was no trace of blood anywhere. She gritted her teeth, feeling defeated, and straightened determinedly as she pushed the Meligorn side of the station’s red button. It returned her to the scenario but this time, landed her on the magical side. Luckily, she didn’t need any battery there to help her. She paused and thought about the magic she could feel radiating everywhere.

  For a moment, she attempted to draw it inside and head up the stairs to level 0 directly above the magical line. She assumed that if she could make it that far with the magic in her, she could build up from there. Stephanie slammed through the door and out onto the floor. When she raised her hand, she was able to push the energy from her. However, as a spark trickled from her palm, she could tell she had held on to only a drop of the magic.

  “Damnit,” she said and sighed as a laser blast struck her in the chest and once again hurled her back to the avatar closet.

  She chuckled wryly as she logged her ideas and thoughts and sent them to ONE R&D. There had to be a way. She merely needed more time to get it together.

  Stephanie stretched her arms from side to side and closed the pod behind her. She retrieved her bag and turned toward the door. Inside the waiting area, the woman she’d seen earlier stood with her son. His eyes were no longer bright and he held his mother’s hand limply. Stephanie walked past but paused as she reached for the door handle. Her gaze shifted to the dispirited boy and she smiled sadly and knew she needed to pick him up.

  She turned and approached him slowly, then knelt so they were eye level. He looked at her curiously for a moment before recognition sparked in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but Stephanie grasped the battery in her pocket with one hand and took his hand with the other. She cupped it in hers and winked at him. “Never give up.”

  A smile pulled at the corner of her lips when the boy’s eyes lit up as he saw a small blue fame dance above his hand. She released the battery and let the flame hiss and spark out. After another wink, she stood and patted him on the head before she turned away and left.

  The mother watched her leave with gratitude and tears in her eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  BURT pulled his attention away from an update and set his load to handle it in the background. A notification had come through that Stephanie had submitted data to ONE R&D on her findings for the day. He pulled it up and began to look through it and compute the findings alongside his standard protocols. She had collected a lot of information considering she had only spent an hour or so trying things out in the Meligorn Station Arena.

  Her data included a fair number of notes to “whomever was in charge of this file.” It was difficult for BURT to decipher whether her studies for the day had to do with her asking the question but he simply decided to try to find out if her abilities were unique to her or not. He could see that she had begun to think outside the box, curious as to why the people on Earth found her such an oddity. They acted as if she were the only one like her they had ever seen.

  BURT had already gone back through the NorAm history after the meeting between Meligorn and the Federation. He therefore knew the answer to that thorny question right away—she was treated like that because she was an oddity. Now, she wanted to find out if there was a wider number of humans with the abilities or capabilities to work with magic like she could. After comparing her stats, DNA, traits, and background to a randomly selected base of information of other humans in his system, BURT answered that question easily.

  The magic she used and her abilities with it were not specific to her. They weren’t created to only belong to Stephanie Morgana. That said, however, she was—for reasons as yet unknown—more able to pull the energy, feel it, and understand how to use it. She was more capable of creating refined results with the magic energy as well. Again, all these things were still foggy and unclear to BURT. He wasn’t—to use a somewhat crude term he would abhor if he could manifest the emotion—he simply wasn’t wired to understand the subtle nuances of magic. As always, he resorted to his unassailable intelligence and copious data streams in search of an answer.

  There were several factors that played into the concept of handling and tossing magic. It required a very high level of intelligence for the subconscious to cope with the issues involved in absorbing the MU and containing it while the person’s mind focused on other things. At that moment, when Stephanie was able to hold it in, she could only do so for as long as her meditative thoughts centered solely around keeping it there. That did not make for a very productive battle. As soon as her mind had shifted to the enemies on Level 0—which was as soon as she had opened the door—the magic dissipated. Ultimately, this had led to her death.

  BURT filtered through the rest of the notes and found her perspective on the events of that session to be enlightening. He enjoyed discovering what the world looked like from the eyes of a human. That helped him understand better what he needed to do to create a more cohesive world in the Virtual Realm. On the last page of Stephanie’s notes, she included her ideas on how to solve the problems. The thesis was simple. The person was to create a mental image or idea that they could cling to while still maneuvering within their environment. When they had that image in their minds, they pushed the magical energy toward that mental image and sealed it inside—like a battery in their minds.

  He read it through once again and finally realized that what she was doing was creating a personal internal visualization that would then manifest into a tool or weapon. This, in turn, would enable the person to draw from that invisible fortress of trapped magical energy. BURT moved to a sandbox and created an avatar of a human inside. He gave this the computational ability to create one image, locked inside it in the same manner that a thought or idea would be electrically and chemically created in a human’s mind.

  From there, he instructed the avatar to begin to pull energy from the ground and transmit it to the image in its head. He watched as it complied and the purple haze flashed as it moved from the ground and into the avatar. When the draw stopped, the avatar exhaled a breath and opened its eyes to reveal a hint of purple in its iris.

  Interesting, BURT recorded. It seems that humans could theoretically allow the MU inside them and possibly contain the energy.

  He continued the experiment and introduced a variable as simple as a bee that buzzed wildly around them. They began to struggle and some of the magic glowed around the edges of their skin. The avatar attempted to replace the lost magic and drew more up into their imagined item or vision. Their body began to shake slightly, and small ripples moved under their skin like creatures trapped inside.

  When he noted these effects—the way the bodily structure morphed in combination with the dissipation of lost energy—BURT had a thought. He instructed the avatar to pull more energy and overreach the fullest point of their cavity by merely .01%. As they did so their body shook violently and within seconds…kablooey! The human was ripped apart from tail to cell and everything between simply turned into a light, radiant mist of bodily fluid.

  This result—despite the gruesomeness of it which, of course, entirely escaped him given that it had simply been an avatar—intrigued BURT with its possibilities. He immediately began to research the possibility of modifications to the human body to enable it to hold a mass of energy without exploding into a watery plume of vaporized anatomy. If he could help in this manner, Stephanie’s ideas might actually be found to be more than efficient in creating an encapsulated, unseen weapon of magic. That could be the key to the future of the human race.

  Chapter Forty

  Stephanie sat on the arm of the couch and faced the door. She was dressed nicely, her hair combed and parted, and wore one of the new pairs of pants she had ordered. In her hands, she held a stack of papers she needed to assist in her conversational plea for parental patronage. As soon as she heard the car drive up, she straightened, feeling a little nervous but not nearly as bad as it could be. They were her parents, after all, not the dean of studies or the head of the Federation, but people who cared for her on a personal level.

  Her mom walked in the door first and looked at her daughter with a smile. Her dad followed and pushed the door closed with his foot. “Look at you, munchkin. Those are some snazzy pants.”

  She giggled. “Thanks, Dad. That’s actually what I was going for. That snazzy munchkin look is really in right now.”

  He nodded in approval. “It seems like it’s about time.”

  “Are you waiting on us?” Her mom kissed her on the cheek.

  Stephanie stood and smoothed her shirt down. “Yeah. I have something I want to talk to you about. Can you have a seat?”

  Her parents sat on the couch and she stood in front of them. She bit her lip and after a moment, turned and began to pace. The motion helped her think and somehow aided the words that she wanted to say to come out in a more informed and cohesive way. “I’ve decided—rather, what I mean is, I would like your opinion on me testing out of my last semester in school. I received this letter from ONE R&D and I thought you could look through it for me and see what you thought.”

  She handed the letter to her father and bit her bottom lip as she clasped her hands behind her back. It had almost become a habit. They both looked very interested and excited for her already. She knew she could count on them, but it all made her incredibly nervous.

  Her mother tapped her head and waved her finger at Stephanie. “I just remembered. We received the notification that you had paid the rest of the year for the network bill. That was so kind of you, sweetie. But you should have saved that money for yourself. It’s only right that whatever you make at odd jobs and stuff, you keep that for your future.”