Reia- A Novella (COMPLETE)

Chapter 8

"Okay, Voro, you can do it," Marfa told himself under his breath. "It's not that hard, remember? Just find the stupid book."

But finding a book wasn't as easy as it sounded everything was in disarray, and Marfa hated it. Sometime late at night when he had been working, Marfa had gotten an alert on his computer from Goiya, the scientist of the Four. Goiya wanted to meet- wanted to talk about the machine Marfa had built.

Marfa declined. With so many variables and the recent "incident," he really just wanted time to riddle out where everything had gone wrong. He was close- he had figured out a key piece and was dying to tell Morai, but meeting with the Four now would probably just ruin his concentration. He was so close- he just had to keep working.

Goiya was rather adamant, however, and after a short conversation Marfa realized that he was in legitimate danger. Goiya didn't like being turned down, and he especially didn't like being turned down rudely (as Marfa had, naturally). So, the scientist had gathered up the most important books he had and began hiding them away in the hall between the lab and the WSEC, where he could lock the door with the passcode and be safe- temporarily.

Unfortunately, during the panic, some of the older books fell apart, sending pages everywhere. Marfa slipped on one paper, cutting his hand open on the edge of a table. He clutched the wall, leaving a stripe of blood before realizing his mistake, and hastily wrapped his hand with bandages. By then, it was getting late at night, so he sent one last message to Goiya explaining what he planned to do, locked himself in, and collapsed in the hallway. He fell promptly asleep.

Morai had been arrested by Goiya! That much he could definitely make out from the coded note Morai had held to the window. And all that kid could think about was making sure Hazira was okay. She could take care of herself, couldn't she? Well, Hazira was in danger as long as Morai was, he supposed.

And Hazira was only dragged into the whole mess before the day of the experiment. She had no responsibility. So Marfa considered it his responsibility to make sure she got out of said mess alive.

That started with getting past the buffoon stationed outside the locked hallway. He was tall, perhaps six inches taller than Marfa. Luckily Marfa was never intimidated by size. He was only ever intimidated by intelligence, which this gentleman seemed to lack grievously. Finally Marfa found the right book, with which he returned to the podium. The room was set, the words were ready, and so Marfa began to read.

Physical things created by the Theory of Transmutation Acoustics never seemed to last very long, for one reason or another. They always tended to dissolve back into sound, slowly fading with a low buzzing noise. It was more effective to turn things into other things, like lamps into hats and kittens into chickens and things like that. That was one of the reasons the word string the Four used was so effective- it wasn't creating anything new, just applying power to what was already there. In his current debacle, Marfa didn't have much to work with besides his precious books. Whatever he made wouldn't last very long, but that was fine. Marfa didn't need a trained mountain wolf for very long anyway. It was lucky that such a specific word string even existed.

Marfa waited a while behind the door before deciding to open it. When he got out of the little hallway, he locked the WSEC door behind him and stepped carefully around the guard's corpse. The hapless scientist winced inwardly at the mess that was left of his lab, and kept moving.

Marfa hardly reacted to the news that the Four had imposed a new curfew, or were firing scientists from his lab. Nothing would surprise him anymore.

Hazira, being a physicist, worked at a research lab downtown that was similar to Marfa's own. Hazira's lab dealt more with the theoretic, but Marfa had had to go there several times himself for seminars and classes when he was just an apprentice. It was called the Okarai Building- named after some old person who did something somewhere.