Free Saga by Connor Kostick

her crystal display to begin browsing through streams of data, reading up on brain scans. That was Athena: full of belief that she could achieve her goals. When she had said this morning that she intended to form a new guild, none of us had laughed. People were always forming guilds, advertising them, trying to get members to sign up. Invariably they collapsed, but if Athena was setting one up, that would be different; it would have an impact, I was sure.
    Having eaten our fill, we relaxed. I don’t know about the others, but I felt happy. It was good to have them around me here, where I had been alone in the past. The only concerns spoiling my good humor were the thoughts with which I had awoken and that were still troubling me.
    “I’ve been thinking again about what happened at the police station.”
    “Me, too.” Athena had been bent over her unrolled computer. Now she straightened up, all her attention on me.
    “And me,” added Nathan. Milan just shrugged noncommittally.
    “Don’t you think what happened was amazing? That pirate, Cindella, she knocked them all out. Fair enough, that could be a drug or something. But I saw her being hit by a pulse blast at full power, and it didn’t hurt her. Then she gave us a drink and we went invisible. Right?”
    “It’s deeply disturbing.” Athena was grim. “I simply cannot find any rational scientific explanation for it.”
    “What about non-scientific ones?” asked Nathan. “What then?”
    “Then I would concede it was magic. But I don’t believe in magic.”
    “I’ll tell you another strange thing.” Milan took his foot down from where it had been resting on a spare chair and sat up straight. “I was keeping a lookout for cops in Turner Square, right before we cut in to the den. There was a woman who stopped walking, and the next moment, she had gone. Disappeared.”
    “I saw her, too.” Nathan’s voice was placid, but his eyes were shining with animation.
    Athena scowled. “There’s a lot of chat in the discussion forums about people appearing and disappearing all of a sudden. It’s very odd. It seems to have started about a week ago.”
    “Really? Show me.”
    After a few careful fingertip touches to her screen, Athena turned the computer to Nathan. The rest of us watched silently as he read, pushing his bangs behind one ear to keep them out of his eyes. Milan slowly wiped his plate clean with a piece of bread, then folded it into his mouth.
    “Very interesting.” Nathan sat up. “I feel that they are connected somehow.”
    “What are?” mumbled Milan through his bread.
    “Cindella making us invisible and these people, popping in and out of existence. It’s the same kind of magic, somehow.”
    Athena resolutely shook her head. “Whatever it is, it is not magic.”
    We just didn’t know enough, but something strange was happening. As far as I was concerned, any change was to be welcomed, but Athena seemed to be taking a different view.
    “Come on.” I hauled my pack out from under the table. “Let’s head back.”
    As we left, I paid for us all with the credit on a red chip.
    We were boarding back through a grim industrial estate toward Arnie’s, when Nath pulled up.
    “Look at that.”
    “Well, well, well.” There was a sting of bitterness in Athena’s voice.
    A row of gaudy posters had been sprayed along the bottom of a large billboard.
    The cryptic phrase at the bottom of the flyers might look a bit odd. But anyone who had heard of Ronnie’s would have no problem understanding it. Ronnie’s was a club that ran in a large abandoned hospital on Fifteenth and Elizabeth. The events there were always arranged randomly, about three or four times a year, and they were always huge. Personally I was not a great enthusiast for the milling throng of hundreds of kids, giddy under the influence of heeby-jeebies, or worse, staggering around drunk. But I usually went. I had to admire the organization behind them and the fact that here were