Free Entromancy by M. S. Farzan Page A

is solely morphological.
    -The Sigil of Sparks
     
    I awoke to the cozy warmth of the afternoon sun beaming through open blinds.  Blinking through my confusion, I looked around the room, initializing my lens display and reorienting myself to my surroundings.
    It took a few moments, but as the sleep escaped my body, I slowly recalled falling facedown onto a mattress in one of Gloric’s aboveground rooms, having eaten a full meal and even more magnificently, taken a hot shower.  My body ached from a dozen bruises and sleeping in the same position, head throbbing from the Oxadrenalthaline hangover.  Alina sat in the corner of the room reading a digitab, a beer in her hand.  Tribe had his shaggy head propped on Buster’s body, both sleeping peacefully.  It looked like they had made friendly with each other.
    “Thought you’d sleep all day,” the Pitcher said without lifting her eyes from her digitab.
    I sat up on the mattress, pinching the bridge of my nose as my head swam.  “You and me both,” I replied.
    I walked over to her, steadying myself on the wall and feeling the room right itself under my feet.  She lifted the can in my direction, and I took a swig from it gratefully.  It was strong but smooth, the bitterness and alcohol clearing my head a little.
    I passed the beer back to her and sat down with a grunt.  “You doing OK?” I asked bluntly, feeling unusually companionable towards her.  Avoiding getting killed together would do that to you.
    Alina looked up at me with piercingly blue eyes, unreadable.  Her curly hair was pulled back under a baseball cap, tame for the moment.  “Yes.”
    I could hear the pain in her voice, and felt responsible.  “If I had known that they would send-”
    “I’m a big girl,” she interrupted me.  “I knew the risks when I aligned myself with Aurichome.”
    I nodded.  “Sure, but they were targeting me, not you.”
    “They would have come for me eventually.”  She sighed, looking away for a moment, then back at me.  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
    I shook my head.  “We’ll fix it,” I said weakly, awkwardly putting a hand on her shoulder.
    She let her gaze fall for a moment, then looked at an old digital time display hanging on the wall.
    “We should get moving,” she said briskly, putting away her digitab and rising to her feet.  “Gloric said we’ll need to get to the Lucky Snake by sundown.”
    I nodded and got up with her, walking over to rouse Tribe and the wolf.  The thief woke with a start.
    “It was gone when I got there!” he sputtered, shaking in my grip.  Buster darted out from under him, bemused.
    “Easy, buddy,” I said gently.  “Time to go.”
    Tribe’s brown eyes focused on me, and he grinned.  “Lunch?”
    We grabbed a bite to eat from Gloric’s considerably stocked kitchen, then collected the gnome from his control room.  There was a brief argument, quickly resolved, when I insisted on driving the SUV.
    “It’s my car,” Alina stated.
    “Really?” I stammered, confused.  “I thought he-”
    “Hotwired it?  Yeah,” Tribe said helpfully.  “It is her car, though.”
    I relented, and the Pitcher and thief took the front seats, while Gloric, Buster and I crowded the back.
    It would take us just under two hours to make it back through the city and over the bridge into Oakland.  It was a circuitous route, but I had convinced the party to let me stop by a safe drop not far from my apartment to pick up some more supplies and a clean set of clothes.
    I still had trouble believing that our guide, a wanted enemy of the state, could be found across the Bay, not ten miles as the crow flies from the NIGHT headquarters.  It was mute testament to how much information the organization purported to have on file about the so-called terrorist revolutionaries, and how little they actually knew.
    “The Sigil is in Reno, and Doubleshot...is in Oakland,” I had said skeptically, looking at the masked figure on