Convergence - The Last Science #2.1 - In Plain Sight

B2: Chapter 5 - Rules of the Game - VII

  Natalie waited in the corner of the library, fidgeting. School had been out for thirty minutes already, and Quinn still hadn't shown up. She'd gone straight there after the bell had finally rung. Their class had been handled by one of the other teachers who had a prep period to end the day, as the principal had pulled their science teacher out for a stern discussion. She'd gotten out a bit early as a result, but Quinn should have arrived by now. The library was only a couple blocks from their school, and students went there all the time, so she didn't feel out of place.

  No one else was nearby. She'd picked out a table in the corner, near one of the fire exits in the back just in case. Boris had mentioned once to always sit close to an exit, even if it was one with an alarm. Better to be noticed like the red fox and able to run, than to get trapped in and eaten like the rabbit, he said. Natalie had started thinking about it all the time ever since. She kept her back to walls whenever she chose a spot to sit and never let people behind her when she could help it. She made sure she could run at any time.

  Since there wasn't a single person close enough to notice, Natalie decided to try out one of the more interesting spell combinations she'd been thinking about for a while. Hector had once explained to her all about how to mess with electricity moving around in devices nearby. He didn't know how to actually move it or create it, but he could totally block it with one of his spells. They'd always used that to make sure no one could record Council meetings. Still, he'd always been pretty limited in how much he could use the spell to pick out specific things. Natalie shared his affinity, so the spells were pretty easy for her to do—and more importantly, Rachel had let her read the Scrap that taught her electricity magic. She was pretty sure she could combine those two into something more useful.

  Natalie closed her eyes and concentrated. She murmured the spell Hector always used to block out electricity around him, but she gave it a little twist. Instead of blocking the area, she stopped short at just marking out the area in her brain, combining it with the sense of electricity in motion. Her mind started to loosen from her head, like it was a ghost floating out into the air.

  She couldn't actually see anything, but she could feel the outline of electricity around her, kind of like a pencil sketch of the room in her head. Natalie could feel the electricity running through the outlets and spinning around the entire building sixty times every second. As she traced it around, she found the spots where it jumped out to specific devices in the building. The computers at the desks, the lights, other devices scattered around she could only guess at.

  Some of it jumped into small black orbs hanging from the ceiling.

  "Jenny!"

  Natalie's eyes flew open. Quinn was finally walking up, backpack over his shoulder and a box covered in fantasy artwork under one arm.

  "Hi Quinn."

  "Sorry I'm so late. I had to walk Tyler home. He was having a bad day with his attacks." Quinn sat down at the table, but Natalie frowned. "What's up?"

  "Sorry," she said. "Can we... uhh... move to another table?" She could feel one of the cameras from the lingering sense of electricity still fading from her mind. It was watching her, making her feel uncomfortable and afraid.

  "Sure?" Quinn shrugged, standing up. "Where do you wanna sit?"

  Natalie closed her eyes again, trying to find every camera in the building now that she knew the pattern of wiring inside them. After tracing the path of the electricity bouncing through all of them, she realized that—despite being in the center of the opposite wall—there was a particular table that would be totally blocked from every camera by tall bookshelves. It was further from the exits, but she felt like Boris would probably agree with her decision. She pointed it out.