Now You See Me: Daniel Atlas

Chapter Thirteen: The Second Act

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Savoy Management welcomes you to tonight's special performance: The Five Horsemen, Act Two. Unlike traditional performances, The Five Horsemen encourage you to film, call your friends, upload, stream, and tweet the show freely. Thank you. The show will begin in a few minutes." We walk onto the stage in the pitch darkness, getting into position.

"Arthur Tressler presents, Jack Wilder, Henley Reeves, Carly Contrary, Merritt McKinney and Daniel Atlas. The Five Horsemen."

Spotlights appear on each of them as their names get called by the announcer.

"Thank you," Daniel starts off the group, gaining everyone's attention. "Before we begin, we'd like to single out two people in particular. A man and a woman to whom we'd like to dedicate tonight's performance."

"FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes and the lovely but somewhat inexperienced, Interpol Agent Alma Dray, everyone." Henley and Carly motion their hands up to them. A spotlight catches them and everyone in the audience boos.

"Agent Rhodes as personally vowed to quote 'Nail us'" Jack says.

"And we encourage him to do so, if he has the brains and the fur," Merritt adds getting a laugh.

"What is Magic?" Daniel begins the show. "Our argument, nothing but targeted deception. So I want you to look. Look as closely as possible. Because the tricks you are about to see may not seem connected. But we assure you, they are. Is what follows 100 different tricks? Or is it one giant illusion?"

The Horsemen stand behind Daniel to form a triangle. The audience cheers as the lights flash around the room before going completely out.

*~*

The show was going perfectly so far. Daniel and Henley debunked their rabbit in a box; Merritt hypnotized 12 lucky audience members. And Jack did a bunch of card throwing tricks. While Carly was watching Jack do his thing Henley comes up to her and whispers in her ear.

"After you're done with your trick you'll do the bubble with Daniel," Henley says.

"Why can't you?" Carly asks quietly.

"I'm feeling a little queasy," Henley lies earning an eye roll from the blonde.

"Fine," She whispers.

As Jack finishes Carly walks onto stage and starts shuffling her cards. She performs a few simple card tricks debunking them on her way through. Once she was done Daniel came onto stage and started 'magically' making bubbles appear from his hands. Carly blew onto bubbles that started to get to close to the ground. Daniel turns to her and smiles fondly.

"Now, I will have Carly float inside one of my bubbles," Daniel says to the audience.

He starts forming a bubble big enough for the blonde to fit in. Carly runs towards the bubble and does a front flip to get inside. She looks down to see the audience below her as she floats higher. She smiles as she stretches herself out inside the bubble doing back flips and twisting. She floats up to the chandelier and taps the bubble loudly causing it to pop. Carly screams as she falls and lands safely into Daniel's arms. She opens her eyes that apparently closed from falling and looks over at Daniel.

Her arms tighten around his neck, and his as he holds hers closer to his body. Being held like this by him made her cheeks blush pink, but she quickly smiles to the audience to cover it up.

The crowd cheers for them as they walk back to stage for intermission. While Merritt was onstage explaining his act, the rest of us were backstage hacking into Arthur's bank account. Henley made sure that his account would be drained by the time everyone found out what happened.