Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller

Janne grudgingly took the news. As an agent, she was loath to take help from people not affiliated with the FBI, but she couldn't get past the fact that her superiors hadn't lined up any support for her. She was caught between doing her duty and the possibility that she wouldn't survive the night if those slavers found out about her.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Shehzadi asked after Janne walked off.

"I'd prefer not to share my thoughts, Shehzadi. You and Nadia left me after promising me your hearts. I at least deserved a goodbye."

"Fair enough," she nodded.

"Did you two have abortions?" I had been meaning to ask the question, but no time seemed to be right. They should have been six months along, had it been only six months?

Shehzadi looked horrified that I would even ask such a thing. "No, Nadia and I had our children a month ago. It's hard to explain, we were on another plane of existence. Uliona is a place where the climate is more temperate and time passes much faster in relation to plane zero, this plane."

"Maybe at some point I can meet them, yes?"

"Of course." Her look shifted to Nadia bringing three more women out of the woods. "Let's arrange it if we survive."

Nadia led her group over to the other refugees and gave them the basics before heading off into the woods with Shehzadi. I didn't know what to do, so I went over to the refugees and introduced myself to them. I made sure that they knew I was transgender and letting them decide whether or not they wanted to converse with me or not.

Their stories were pretty much the same. Even though most of them were heterosexual, the NLA had taken them in and gave them a place to hide. Over the last couple of weeks women had been brought over to the other side of town, 'the Butches' warning the refugees to stay away from them. They gave me a brief description of how their lives had been before the others had shown up. Their lives had been mostly about coping with what happened to them, and preparing for life outside of the refuge.

Shannonburg proper was actually a functioning town. There were shops and schools and pretty much every building was used as well as half the houses. The high school and the surrounding complex was off-limits from the beginning, and nobody really paid it any notice. The complex was isolated by fence and trees, so keeping the newcomers away from the residents had been easy.

A young woman came up to me and handed me a tablet. She told me that she had gotten into the security camera network for the school before, but her battery was dead. I thanked her and promised to take care of it before I went back to see Janne.

The tablet was handed over to one of the technicians who plugged it in and started viewing the feeds. A minute later, she sat it down and was viewing those same feeds on her computer. Janne suggested in a whisper that I call my friends and share that information with them.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I just called Janine and she conferenced me in with Heather, her hacker. Within a few minutes she announced that she was in and started describing what she was seeing to Janine. After a minute or so, I had a pretty good picture of what was going on. I gave my goodbye and went to mull over this new data and how it fit into my spreadsheet.

Janine called me a half-hour later to tell me that we had a problem. Two more drones had taken up station over the area, and Heather had gotten into their feeds. We were being watched by military-grade drones that were armed with missiles. She explained that each of the drones had eight of those missiles, every missile capable of destroying more than a block of Shannonburg. Now I had to decide whether or not to share that information with Janne.

Agent Sumika was both enraged and terrified. She asked me for detailed information, so I connected her with Heather the hacker and let them converse. There were plenty of technical terms exchanged, Janne sighing after each exchange. When she handed the phone back, Janne was close to tears, but walked off before I could ask her what was wrong.

Alone at the edge of the forest, my wandering mind became attuned to what was going on around me, noises from the insects, hushed conversations from the women in the forest. Huh? Nadia emerged first, coming over to where I was standing. When I told her what was going on, she took my hand and gave it a pat. She told me that all magicians had heightened senses, but some didn't even realize it until they were with nature. After encouraging me to keep trying, she led her charges over to the staging area.

Several minutes later, I could 'feel' into the forest up to the town. There were a lot of frightened women in there, scared for themselves, scared for the children with them. The two agents assigned for exfiltration were noisy compared to Nadia and Shehzadi. Even Janne was noisy coming up behind me. She needed me to see something that was happening inside the school.

I hadn't really looked at the video feeds when they first came up because the tablet screen was crowded by agents who were actually doing something. The technician had gotten the feeds up on some of the monitors in the surveillance bus. They showed feeds of men going around handing sheets of paper to the captive women, some of which were no older than Hayley. An overwatch camera of the auditorium showed the women being led in front of a larger camera, pausing for a minute then leaving through another door.

"The auction is being broadcast?" I asked.

"It appears that some of the men going into the town are actually here to pick up their prizes," Janne said. "Only a few buyers are actually on-site."

"Then why have it here at all?"

"Shannonburg is isolated, but it is minutes away from major interstates, less than two hours from the oceans," Janne explained. "Eighteen private airfields within the same timeframe, most big enough for a Gulf or a Lock."

"Can't you call the FAA?"

"Requests like that have to come from on high, and they aren't taking my calls right now," Janne said. "I don't know what to do."

"All we can do is wait. If they start leaving, we can stop them here or call it into the locals."

"Heather I have a feeling that the people behind those Reaper drones above us won't let us intervene." Janne looked up to the starry sky. "We're targets here. The area is big but the road is a bottleneck. They blow that little bridge, we're fish in a barrel."

"If one of those missiles can wipe out a block, they could get us all with just one missile. Well, I'd feel bad because I couldn't help any of you."

"Why?"

"I can't perform linear folds with any accuracy. Known places are fine, but unknown places can kill me. Even if I could fold with precision, I couldn't fold with a mortal. It would do a lot of damage to their body or kill them."

"So no jumping in and zapping the bad guys either?" Janne asked.

"That not possible," Nadia said. "The town itself is warded, the area around the school doubly so. If Shehzadi and I weren't rescuing those women and children, we wouldn't be able to cross onto the town proper without an invitation from a resident. Someone wanted to keep magic users out of Shannonburg. I'm pretty sure that warding has been there for a century or more."

"How does that work?" Janne asked.

Nadia gave Janne the basic lesson about magic users and the laws of man. Janne was a quick learner, asking detailed questions when she needed clarification.

I started hearing a buzzing noise and instinctively turned my head to look for the source. Then I felt something, a presence coming from the general direction of the town. "Do you feel that, Nadia?"

"Dark magic, old and powerful." Nadia coughed, hard, spitting out a wad of phlegm. "It's concentrated, many dark people just appeared."

Just then, a smell hit me. It was like roadkill laying out in the hot sun times a thousand. I was lucky I wasn't facing toward either of them because the vomit wasn't staying in. "Oh my goddess that's nasty," I said. My mind instinctively reached out and pulled a bottle of water from a refrigerator in one of any number of my houses. I washed the vomit out of my mouth and when I was done I saw Janne staring at me. "What?"

"Can I have one?" Janne asked.

It was harder to call the second bottle than the first, just like it was harder to fold if I was really thinking about it.

"Object translocation," Nadia explained.

"Nifty," Janne nodded.

Whatever had caused my nausea had subsided, a lingering stench reminded me how vulnerable I was. Nadia and Janne didn't seem affected by the smell, which was unusual. Either they couldn't smell it because they were women, or it was aimed at me for a reason.

Janne was called back to the surveillance van, leaving Nadia to wonder about me. "What is it?"

"It was the nastiest road kill I have ever come across times a thousand. Putrid and rotten, I'll never forget it."

"I didn't smell a thing, so the smell is psychic. Those kinds of things can be aimed, so did you smell it because you are partially male..."

"...or because I am a Child of the Sphere," I finished. "Something tells me I'm about to find out."

"I've got to go lead another group," Nadia waved.

Janne was in a tizzy because she had lost contact with the two agents still in Shannonburg. Shehzadi and the other two agents had just completed a rescue run, and Janne had stopped them from going on another. The drone covering the school showed a group approaching the buildings, and the armed men playing guards firing at them.

"That's it, I'm sending my teams in," Janne said.

The teams mounted their specially outfitted tactical vehicles and rolled toward the town. I got a really bad feeling that something was going to happen to them and asked Janne to pull them back. She was in combat mode and told me that I was not an agent and free to leave at any time.

I sat in the van and watched the action cams from the agents with Janne and Shehzadi. The team split into two and entered the town in stealth, stealing through the buildings but not seeing anyone out on the streets. We could see a battle going on at the school, and it was going badly for the guards before the feed from the drone cut off.

"Whatthefuck?" Janine grumbled. "What happened?"

"We lost all feed and telemetry from drone one," the technician announced.

"Steer one of the others over there," Janne ordered.

The technician complied with the command. I could tell she was trying not to get physically close, instead letting the drone's optics do the work. The picture fixed on one of the teams moving toward the school, then shifted to the other team.

Another shift focused on the school itself. The firefight was still going on, if you could call it that. One group, the so-called guards of the school were firing weapons, both long and short barreled. The other group, which had spread out into twenty or so individual blips, wasn't using firearms.

There was a bright flash on the monitor, and by the time it cleared, there were more blips on the screen. Large pulses of heat went from the invaders to the guards and the guards started falling over. "What is that?" Janne asked.

"Whatever those people are throwing, it registers white-hot, like plasma?" The technician was lost, probably thinking she was watching a video game.

"Fireballs." Shehzadi was in my head. "The psychic stink, the fireballs, those are sorcerers."

Ok, so sorcerers. Why were they here? Why were they here now? Sorcerers?

The teams on the ground were frozen in place. Janne tried talking to them, the whispers she got in reply told me they were scared shitless.

My cellphone rang, Janine had to pick this moment to call. "Heather, you need to get the fuck out of there. Those Reapers are getting ready to fire."

"Everybody out!" I shouted and ran for the door. Shehzadi followed me, and Janne and the techs were startled enough to follow. We got outside just in time to see the drones firing their missiles...

...at Shannonburg. Bright streaks of light flew through the sky and were met by balls of fire coming from the ground. The shots that took the missiles down were followed by fireballs aimed at the drones. Both suffered hits, their inertia carrying them far enough so that they crashed into the nearby lake.

Then more balls of fire came from the town and two small explosions confirmed the destruction of the FBI drones that were flying over Shannonburg.

"Shit," Janne ran back into the trailer. I poked my head inside long enough to hear Janne trying to recall her special weapons teams. The screens still showed the videos from their cameras, and we could hear them, but she couldn't talk to them. "Give me the emergency flare," Janne said.

She was handed a flare gun and I got out of her way as she rushed outside. The flare gun had multiple shots and Janne popped them all off. The feeds told us that the agents had gotten the message and tried to extricate themselves from their observation areas.

Then all hell broke loose. The agents started firing their weapons at someone, Janne whispering that she hoped civilians weren't in those lines of fire.

For a brief moment, I saw a face on one of the agents' cameras before they all went out. It was a pale face, wrinkled and old. The eyes were glowing red, the nose was almost non-existent and the person had no lips. Sorcerers.

"Shit," Janne muttered.

The cameras had went out, but the audio links were still active for maybe twenty minutes. All we heard were muffled moans and screams, like they were gagged and being tortured. I wanted to do something, anything to help them, but Janne saw me twitch and blocked the door. She told me that she would arrest me if necessary, all she had to do was say the words.

Finally the audio links cut off. Janne ordered the technicians to send more drones, but they didn't get to the town before they fell from the sky and crashed.

Without even focusing my sense, I felt a presence over us. Somebody was flying, circling over the town. It was actually two people, a man and a woman. The woman completely vanished from my sense and the man did as well, briefly reappearing before he was totally gone. I had the feeling that he had crash-landed.

I reached out again with this sense and aimed it at the town. I got a smell of rotting bodies and a feeling of lots of scared women. Then a wall went up, a literal wall blocking my sense from seeing inside the town.

I popped out of the trailer to get some air and saw Nadia crossing the clearing with a man and woman following her. Shehzadi ran toward them, "Tash!"

"Shehzadi. What are you doing here?" The woman asked.

"We were helping the FBI with their invasion of Shannonburg," Shehzadi replied. She turned to the man. "I know you, you're Kevin Brown, the man who raped and beat that woman out in Los Angeles."

"That tape was faked," the woman said. "And I know that personally. Stand down, little one."

"Nadia and I thought the pictures of that woman, Simone, looked pretty real," Shehzadi said.

Kevin looked like he was ready to explode. "You want to know what happened? My ex-wife came up behind me and knocked me unconscious with a fire extinguisher. Then her and another person used my hands to beat Simone bloody. They didn't think I would survive my head being smashed in, so they assumed everybody would believe them."

"I don't believe you," Shehzadi said.

"I don't care," Kevin shrugged. "Everybody that matters, including Natasha here, believes me."

Slam down on the little twat, I thought with an inward giggle. Time to announce myself. "Well, I believe him." I held out my hand to Kevin. "Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller."

"Kevin Brown," He gently took my hand. I instantly got a sense of what he was about, he was a Child of the Sphere like me. He also knew I wasn't completely woman, and it didn't repulse him. "Wow, you look amazing. You feel amazing too."

If there was ever another man I could fall in love with, it would be Kevin. He had an ordered mind, and he was dark and handsome, fucking hot. He also had a darkness inside him. "Thank the magic." I paused, processing the darkness. "You've just killed someone, Kevin."

"In all fairness he was protecting me, Heather," Natasha said.

"There is regret there, that is what I felt," I said. "Don't feel sorry for those beings, Kevin, they are not human anymore. They are even worse than the men we were after."

"Can I ask you a personal question, Heather?" Kevin asked.

You can ask me anything. Ask me for a blow job, I'd suck your cock in a minute. Kevin wasn't wanting his cock sucked, he really wanted to know about the bruises. "I am a natural immortal. The reason the bruises haven't healed yet is because I was beaten in passion by someone I loved. Those wounds take longer to heal."

"A wife beater," Nadia muttered. She glared at Kevin. "A woman beater."

"So what's going on here? Why is the FBI involved?" Kevin asked.

"A little while ago I was contracted to look through some accounting ledgers. That's my gift from The Sphere, Kevin, I do numbers. Anyway, I found some anomalies in those ledgers that told me that there was going to be a slave auction here in Shannonburg."

"A slave auction, by sorcerers?" Kevin seemed confused.

"No, the slaver assholes are quite human," Nadia said. "We were in position, ready to take them down when the sorcerers came to crash the party. The agents didn't stand a chance against them."

"How many people are in there?" Kevin demanded.

"Over five thousand," I replied. "Shannonburg was supposed to be a haven for exploited and abused women. Just recently people had started importing women to be sold at auction here. There is no police presence in this area, the locals think Shannonburg is haunted."

"That's why this place looked so familiar from above!" Kevin exclaimed.

"Above?" Nadia asked.

"Above?" Janne echoed.

"Klara and I came through here years ago. There were a lot of tales, and I used a program to tap into all the aerial photos of the area. I was looking for some ominous signs carved around the town or something. There wasn't, at least it's not as obvious as Laurel."

"So, above?" Janne pried in her 'agent' tone.

"Kevin and Natasha flew in, Janne," I explained. "I felt them land. Well, Natasha landed, Kevin not so much."

"Flew?" Janne asked.

"Do you remember what I showed you, Janne?" I asked. "They are better at it."

"Fine, whatever. I've got twenty agents inside that town and no way to contact them since yesterday. These were the best female agents the bureau had to offer and they were tortured by animals!"

"Did they get anything out? Kevin asked. "Numbers, locations?"

"No, just a lot of grunting and moaning," Janne replied.

"Shit. Motherfucking bastards," Kevin muttered.

"What?" Shehzadi asked.

"Sorcerers don't like to hear women talk, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard to them. The first thing they do when they come across a woman is to take away their mouths," Natasha explained. "The women can recover from it, their mouths will reappear when they get far enough away."

Oh, fucking goddess. Sealing a woman's mouth shut? That is what all the moaning was, they were crying out for help! No wonder Kevin is pissed.

"You never told us that," Shehzadi said to Natasha.

Kevin's cell rang. He fished it out of his pocket and put it up to his ear. "Hello?"

I could hear the tone of voice from the woman on the other end. Panicked. "Slow down, Katie, what's going on?"

Another minute of panic. "Who took them?" Kevin demanded. "I know where they are, I'll get them back."

"You'd better!" I heard that clear as day.

"What's wrong?" Natasha asked.

"They have Sandy and Cameron and Angel in there," Kevin replied.