Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Read online

  “What’s going on here?” screamed a new voice as three police officers pushed their way through the front doors.

  Paul held out his badge again. “Homeland Security! Bio-warfare Division! I need everyone out of this building!”

  The black police officer stared at him. “Hazmat suits? You can’t be serious—!”

  More firemen were pushing in behind the police. “Who’s in charge here?” shouted one of them.

  It was at that moment that billows of green smoke practically exploded out of the ventilation system grills.

  “Toxic levels!” Capie howled. “Lethal toxic levels!”

  Pure panic rampaged through the room as everyone simultaneously bolted for the exit.

  Paul ramped up the volume on the speaker on his chest. “Evacuate this building! Now! NOW! NOW! And if you see any red gas, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”

  • • • •

  Paul and Capie separated, stomping through the first and second floors, flashing badges, screaming orders for people to get out and then planting and triggering more smoke bombs.

  All throughout the building, hospital personnel were frantically evacuating patients in wheelchairs, gurneys and hospital beds—anything that would roll. More and more firemen and police were showing up, lending assistance, and helping patients out of their rooms and the building.

  Capie moved up to the third floor while Paul tackled the fourth. From the hospital records that they had tapped into at the restaurant, they knew that Chris was ‘supposedly’ in Room 508 and it was logical to presume that the Oni had set their trap on that floor at that location.

  “No sign of any Oni on this floor either,” he told Capie over his headset as he marched down a fourth floor hallway.

  “I feel bad that we are scaring all these people to death,” Capie said back over her headset. “Nothing on the third floor as well.”

  “I’m moving to the sixth floor,” Paul replied. “If we don’t do this, your father’s life is in extreme risk. And remember, all we need is one Oni.”

  The elevators and even stairwells were all busy, so Paul cast a spell at one elevator door, forcing the doors to open on the empty shaft. He peered in and looked down and saw the top of the elevator car heading downward. With a levitation spell, he floated into the shaft and up to the sixth floor and magically forced the doors open there.

  He saw several nurses and orderlies milling about uncertainly, so he popped out a few more smoke bombs into ventilator shafts and one into the nurse’s station.

  Paul walked out into the middle of the group of Normals and, holding forth his visual thermometer, he started screaming, “Homeland Security, Bio-Warfare Division! This hospital is heavily contaminated and must be evacuated now, Now, NOW!”

  Clouds of red smoke burst into the hallway, as screams echoed forth.

  “And if you see any green gas, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”

  • • • •

  A couple of minutes after her last conversation with her husband, Capie thought about leaving the third floor and heading up to the fifth. She had worked the third floor pretty hard and it was already well on its way to being evacuated. But no, she couldn’t do that. Paul wouldn’t like it.

  However, since she was done with the third floor, her masquerade as a Homeland Security Agent was no longer needed. With little effort, she found an empty office and went in, closing the door behind her. She started to ‘doff’ the hazmat suit but found it difficult to remove the thing single-handed. She found it easier to get it off by using magic spells, ripping the material off in large pieces. With one hand, she pulled loose the gasmask, and then yanked forth the airsoft rifle, pistol and her spare magazines from out of the folds of the blue suit. Then she shucked off the backpack now nearly empty of smoke bombs.

  Out in an open corridor, she slung the rifle over one shoulder and headed out.

  When she went around a corner in the corridor, she saw her very first Oni, about fifty feet away, dressed in the uniform of a hospital security guard. And it was heading her way.

  For a second, she froze, not knowing what to do.

  The Oni was extremely ugly, far more so than the images that Paul had shown her. Ghastly! Ugh! She had no desire to meet anything like that on a dark street in the middle of the night!

  Still, their plan depended on separating one Oni from the others, in order to take it captive. And, as best she could tell, here was one already all by itself.

  Maybe get it to follow her? Then she could contact Paul and they could arrange a place to ambush it?

  She ducked back around the corridor corner and out of its sight. She wasn’t sure why she was hiding. There were still a few Normals running up and down the corridor and the Oni wasn’t paying any attention to any of them. And with her different clothing, her new hairstyle and minus the wheelchair, her looks were altered enough that she shouldn’t be recognizable as Chris Kingsley’s daughter any more. Of course, the airsoft rifle she had in hand and the pistol in the shoulder holster marked her as different from the other Normals here and that might get her noticed.

  So she pulled back and hot-footed it into the small office again, swinging the door most of the way closed, leaving it cracked only partway open.

  The Oni rounded the corner, marching along at a good clip. Up this close, through the crack, she got an even better look at how hideous it was and she decided that she really didn’t want one of these beasts chasing her.

  And then the Oni stopped in mid-stride, staring at her door.

  She had been seen! Her heart skipped two beats, then it kicked into overdrive.

  The Oni was giving her and the door a suspicious stare.

  “What’s going on, lady?” it hollered. “Why are you hiding?”

  That was when Capie saw the fire-extinguisher tucked inside a glass-door cabinet mounted in the wall behind the beast.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated. “In the name of Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum and Mrs. Peacock, may my wizardly spell do it to the Oni in the hall with the fire extinguisher!”

  She opened her eyes in time to see the glass-door spring open and the fire extinguisher leap out of the cabinet, the pin shooting out of the handle, the short hose whipping around to aim, and the sudden spewing discharge of white vaporous gas fired directly at the head of the Oni monster. Out of the corner of one eye, she noted that the Normals in the hallway were scattering, clearing the area as fast as they could.

  With an angry roar, the Oni spun around, trying to swat the flying fire extinguisher out of the air. But the red canister danced out of range, adjusting its aim to continue the attack.

  Capie snapped the door open and swung up the rifle. However, it wouldn’t fire! Mumbling angry words at herself, she flipped the safety off and squeezed the trigger again, hard.

  The first several BBs did nothing, simply sailing past the Oni which was too busy fighting the fire extinguisher to notice. Belatedly, Capie realized that she wasn’t using the fusion spell at all, so the BBs flying past the beast were being wasted.

  The Oni cast a spell, using a blast of plasma to knock the fire extinguisher up against the wall, smashing and destroying it. As the monster flipped back around towards Capie, she finally managed to engage the fusion spell on two BBs.

  An explosion the equivalent of two sticks of dynamite ripped up and down the corridor, the shockwave punching the walls and floor near the Oni hard, cracking sheetrock and tile alike. The blast hurled the beast upward and backward against the far wall.

  Capie was thrown backwards into the middle of the office, but she fortuitously missed all of the furniture, the carpeting saving her from any serious injury.

  Dazed, she managed to get slowly to her feet. Everything seemed to hurt, and the ringing in her ears was so incredibly loud!

  She cast a spell on herself and immediately began to feel better. And too, she could hear again. She looked out into the hallway for the Oni.

  It was sprawled on the floor, not moving.

&
nbsp; For another moment, she hesitated. What to do next?

  Oh, yeah, Paul had said—back in the planning meeting at the restaurant—that he hoped he could capture an Oni’s talisman along with an Oni.

  The corridor was full of drifting dust from the explosion and even some residue from the blue smoke bombs she had used on this floor. Holding her breath and gritting her teeth, she made herself cross over to the hideous monster and grip the circular talisman on its belt. With a sharp tug, she jerked it free. She knew she couldn’t use it without breaking the protective spell cast on it or unless she could get it far enough away from its owner that the protective spell would no longer work.

  As valuable as the talisman was, however, capturing an Oni was the priority and she had one.

  She looked up to see a half dozen Normals, nurses and orderlies mostly, standing a few yards away, staring silently at her, their expressions denouncing her, accusing her of a horrendous criminal act.

  Suddenly feeling guilty and unsure of herself, she clasped the talisman hard and fled, the Oni seemingly not so important anymore.

  • • • •

  As Paul rounded a purple smoke-filled corner on the sixth floor, he nearly ran full tilt into an Oni.

  Outfitted in a security guard’s uniform, the Oni growled at him.

  “You dressed up for Halloween?” it snarled at him. “What’s going on here?”

  Paul’s heart threatened to climb up into his throat as he flashed his badge again. “Homeland Security. It’s a terrorist attack. The hospital is being evacuated.”

  The Oni scowled. “Don’t sound right. McDougall would have said something if it were a terrorist attack. What’s your name? Take that stuff off!”

  Paul snapped off a glove and held forth his hand, concentrating hard on his vacuum permittivity spell.

  In front of him, in a bubble of space three feet in diameter and centered on the Oni’s head, he lowered the value of vacuum permittivity as low as he could force it. By his estimate, it went down roughly ten percent.

  The Oni’s eyes bulged wide, its mouth dropped open and its arms jerked up against its body. Then, it buckled its knees, falling to the floor, its eyes rolling up into its head. It twitched for a moment, then stopped. When Paul released the spell, the Oni fitfully started to breathe again but remained unconscious.

  For a moment, Paul stood there frozen in surprise. It had actually worked! He had actually stunned an Oni with his vacuum permittivity spell!

  Two orderlies and a police officer stumbled past, each helping to carry or support a hospital patient on their way to the elevator.

  “I’ll be back to help you!” shouted the officer.

  Paul waved him on. Grabbing the Oni’s arms, he dragged the heavy limp form into a patient’s room. With a glance around, Paul confirmed that it was unoccupied.

  Without warning, the whole hospital shook, the windows rattling as a loud boom reverberated through the building.

  “Capie!” he said breathlessly. “What was that?!”

  He took hold on the creature’s talisman on its belt and pulled it loose. He now had the creature’s talisman, which was much more powerful than his tantalum block.

  “Capie? Can you hear me?” he asked again, suddenly very concerned that she had not responded.

  “Capie!?” he cried loudly a third time.

  Paul started tearing off his hazmat suit, using his magic freely to shred it into small pieces, freeing both himself and the airsoft weapons underneath.

  “Capie?” he cried yet again.

  “Yes, Paul, I am here,” she responded in his headset.

  “Oh, thank God! Did you feel the building shake?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry. That was just me.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked, suddenly worried again for her safety.

  “I’m fine. But the Oni I ran into isn’t.”

  He froze for a moment. “You ran into an Oni?”

  “I did. I have his talisman too.”

  Paul chuckled in sudden release. “Way to go girl! Do you have him tucked away somewhere? Can we sneak him out of the building?”

  “No,” she answered sharply. “Too many Normals saw me do it.”

  “Okay. It just so happens I have an Oni too, on the 6th floor. I’ll take him out through one of the roof access points and fly him to the west, to Washington Park, to Bynum Island. We can portal out from there. Can you go back to the second floor, maybe take the north exit?”

  “Yes, I think I can,” she replied, and despite the limitations of the radio link, he could hear the relief in her voice that her part was nearly over. “I’ll meet you in the park.”

  With access to his tantalum block (it had been stuffed inside his shirt in his waist band), Paul used it to frantically scratch the surface of the Oni’s talisman. That act broke the protective spell on the talisman, allowing Paul to use it now for his own purposes.

  Using a levitation spell, he floated the body of the Oni into the air and hefted it across his shoulders. Then he peeked out into the corridor, in both directions. There was still a lot of purple smoke in the air but it seemed to be clear of movement. Apparently, the Normals had now pretty much evacuated this wing of the hospital.

  He moved out, heading for the nearest stairwell. From there, he could go up to the roof.

  Behind him there was a sudden cry. He spun awkwardly around. Down the corridor, through the smoke, he saw another Oni. This one too was dressed as a security guard.

  It raised a hand and screamed, “Stop!”

  Paul turned, dumping the Oni he was carrying to the floor and ran, ducking down another corridor as a plasma burst struck the wall near him.

  • • • •

  Feeling a great deal better about their chances for success, Capie headed towards the nearest stairwell. All she had to do now was to sneak down to the second floor and then over to the north walkway leading over to the Medicine Corner Children’s Hospital. That would put her far enough away from the Bernard A. Mitchell Hospital to allow her to use a magical spell to fly off to Washington Park without fear of discovery.

  She took it slow and carefully, checking the path in front of her as she went. At the stairwell, she noted that there were still a few stragglers from the upper floors making their way to the first floor. She grinned as she joined in, tromping down the stairs, each step taking her that much closer to escape and safety. Soon, they would have an Oni to question and to pry from him where Dad was being held captive.

  As she neared the landing on the second floor, there was an Oni waiting.

  Oh, no! Her heart beat faster and the feeling of satisfaction she had been experiencing was instantly replaced by trepidation.

  The Oni was visually scanning the Normals as they went past. She didn’t know what it was looking for. Perhaps for another Oni or maybe for her or Paul. But she still had the airsoft rifle, tucked up tightly against her side, the pistol in the shoulder holster and in her right hand she held the talisman she had taken. Sure, if there were a place to dump them, she could probably have walked past the Oni, head held high, and it wouldn’t have known any better. But here in the stairwell, there was no such place.

  Edging out of the flow of Normals, she spun around to climb the stairs, her movements slow and deliberate, in contrast to the beating of her heart.

  However, there just weren’t enough people to hide her movements. The Oni spotted her immediately. And it saw the airsoft rifle.

  “Hey there! Stop!” it shouted, advancing toward her.

  With a spell, she levitated upward, bypassing the handrails and corkscrewing up the stairwell, just as fast as she could go.

  There were cries of alarm from the Normals as they ducked away from her.

  As she rapidly negotiated another tight turn, a bolt of plasma streaked past, singeing the right side of her face. It impacted on a concrete wall, eliciting screams of panic and near hysteria from the Normals. Suddenly, everyone on the stairwell was stampeding for the exits.


  Capie couldn’t let it continue. She dove through the top of the doorframe at the fourth floor, dodging quickly to the left, narrowly averting being hit by another plasma bolt.

  She ducked and weaved in flight, heading toward the connecting corridor with the south wing of the hospital. What neither she nor the pursuing Oni noticed was a fire extinguisher tearing itself out of its glass door cubbyhole and flying out after them.

  “Paul!” she screamed into the headset. “Paul, I need your help!”

  FIVE

  Bernard A. Mitchell Hospital

  5841 S Maryland Ave.

  Chicago, IL

  June

  Monday 9:21 p.m. CDT

  Using his elevator door trick, Paul ducked down to the fifth floor and through the maze of labs there. He wasn’t sure, but thought that the Oni was still in pursuit.

  And then he heard his wife’s cry for help.

  “Paul!” her voice screamed. “Paul, I need your help!”

  “I’m being chased by an Oni!” he cried. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where are you?”

  “Fourth floor, south west wing!” she screamed. “Hurry!”

  The whole plan, so close to success, was unraveling on them. Capie was in trouble and needed his help but he had to deal with the Oni on his tail first. Muscles trembling in near panic, Paul ducked into an office and behind a desk. He forced himself to be still, to lie in wait.

  It didn’t take long. He could hear noises in the corridor and some muttered obscenities from the Oni. There was a loud bang, apparently from a door being smashed open. It was searching for him.

  And it would find him here, there was no doubt.

  Paul hefted the talisman in his hand. It was equal to what the Oni in the corridor was carrying. And he had the vacuum permittivity spell he could use.