Kris:

  Her blood sang as she considered the idea of magic testing. A whole new aspect of the universe to explore. Even with the threats outside the lab, she felt a passionate thrill of excitement at the prospect of testing something so new and profound.

  With the panic and tension of the past hour buried under the excited little butterflies in her stomach, Kris stepped out of the lab to see Alynne and her mother directing the Anvien workers in a rapid remodeling of the chamber. At the far end, where they’d entered from the direct stairway to the surface, there was a new wall in place.

  “We need to find a good place to try something dangerous without going off completely on our own.” Mari had a finger tapping against her chin, eyebrows knit together in thought.

  “What can you make with those nanites of yours? Targets to practice on?”

  Mari didn’t reply, she just snapped her fingers, then moved towards the corpses, breaking down the infection for fuel. Her hands waved in the air for a minute before she nodded, then started coalescing the red mist into items right before their eyes.

  In easily moved pieces, they had enough barricade sections on makeshift wheels that they could roll them across the huge room towards the north exit. If they had a map, the hidden stairway was in the adjacent room to their east. The south was where the lab was, and then the chamber had only the north exit remaining, which was where the afflicted had come from.

  As they began rolling barricades to fill the opening, Kris began to wonder a few things aloud. “What did the empire have against doors? Like, all of this complex was built without doors between rooms.”

  “If I had to guess, it was to move the heavy equipment, like the pods. They weren’t built here, they were brought in. Must’ve just been easier to not have to navigate through doors along the way.”

  “So…” Kris trailed off, tapping on the barricade she was moving, “where does this stuff come from?”

  Mari shrugged. “I assume the nanites convert material into them.”

  “But… convert what? Like, we don’t see the corpses themselves disappear, only the blood. There wasn’t enough blood to somehow turn it into a riot barrier.”

  “Right, true, but you’re asking while holding a gun that literally fires magic bullets.”

  Kris gave her a look. “It uses the energy of mana and converts it into inertia to launch a dart of pure kinetic energy. Or something along those lines. Regardless, it’s entirely scientific, I swear.”

  Mari laughed, shaking her head ruefully as she slotted the last barricade into place and stomped hard on the lever to separate the wheels from the panel. Once they were off, the metal wall thumped onto the ground, forming a solid barrier against any more afflicted creatures from the sublevels. All the while, Mari kept laughing, constantly shaking her head.

  “What’s so funny?” Kris asked, indignant.

  “Fine. One question, oh wise and scientific master. Where does the energy of mana come from?” Mari gave her a pointed stare, and Kris frowned.

  “I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m sure there’s a reason for it. One far more plausible than your nanites creating things from nothing. One day, you’ll see.”

  Mari stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, her lips frozen in a half-grin. “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How am I the one who believes in magical and mystical things when you’re the one who’s studying literal magic?” Mari’s question had Kris stunned. She didn’t have a solid answer for that. “See? That there. That’s exactly the right line of thought. Not everything needs a scientific answer. If it works and helps us, then that’s good enough for me.”

  “But understanding something well can help you use it better.” Kris found her metaphorical guns and clung to them desperately.

  “Sure, but as a woman of action, I am perfectly fine with just accepting that a thing works, without being bogged down by the how’s and why’s of it.”

  “A woman of action, huh?” Kris quirked an eyebrow, poking Mari in the exposed stomach, beneath her short-cropped shirt. “I’ll have to find out for myself later.”

  Kris reveled in the thrill of excitement that hit her when she saw Mari looking at her with complete understanding at her flirting. She could admit to herself that it was one of her worries, given how little Mari understood people in the past. Also, the feeling of steel abs was even better than looking at them.

  “Magic. Tests. Thinly veiled flirting later. We do have monsters to kill.”

  Kris sighed, then hefted the weapon she had made. She refocused on the urgency of the immediate tasks. The threat was contained, but they had to deal with it eventually. She could probably count on her mother, Alynne, and Vilke helping them out with that goal.

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  “Actually, where is Vilke?” Kris realized she hadn’t seen him in a bit.

  “Checking over the weapons he dug out of his gear. Remember how I dismantled my own weapons and checked them over before firing any? He didn’t have a chance when he handed them out first, so he’s taking the chance now. Hate for one to misfire or something.” Mari was interestingly focused on weapon safety, which Kris was surprised to realize she found pretty attractive.

  “That makes sense. How did you want to make things safe for testing?” Kris followed along behind Mari as she returned to the exsanguinated corpses of the animals, then watched as she burned the last of the red mist from their bodies to make a clear shield that was about as tall as they were.

  “First, we do a dry test. Stand behind the shield, pull the trigger without any ammo—or power source, as it were.” Mari held up the shield and slid in close, lifting Kris’ arm up past the barrier.

  “But nothing will happen?” Kris couldn’t help the slightly annoyed tone, indicating how dumb she found the idea.

  “You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to make a gun that has hitches in the trigger mechanism, which makes the gun jerk a little when you fire it, ruining your aim.”

  Kris was taken aback when faced with the context, but she had to admit the rationality to the argument. She hadn’t considered there being any issues with the mechanics of her design. She only thought about the magical components.

  She nodded, steadied the weapon, then laid her finger on the trigger while aimed at the barricades they had just set up. Only upon that action did she realize each of the four panels had a series of concentric circles painted on them.

  Her first thought was that the gun didn’t have a very good sight on it. The magic device didn’t even have the pins built into the top that Mari’s Remera had after the scope had been removed from it.

  She shook her head, clearing the thoughts before pulling the trigger back. The gun did shift in her hand when she squeezed, twitching slightly upwards. But it wasn’t the trigger that caused it, it was the movement of her hand as she tensed the muscles.

  Thankfully, the weapon didn’t somehow find a way to fire without any mana spheres inside it. But it was enough that she was annoyed with her own short-sightedness.

  Mari reached out and turned the weapon sidelong to examine it. Then she nodded, waved her hands in the air for a few seconds, then expelled some red mist from her skin that coalesced into a second barrel, one that was underneath the one from her design, but parallel to it, adding a bit of extra weight to the end of the weapon.

  “Try now. The weight of the weapon was too focused on the grip, so it was easy for you to lose accuracy because of that.” Mari gave her a confident smile, followed by a wink that sent shivers down Kris’ spine.

  All the while, Kris was very aware of how close Mari was to her, holding up the shield to prevent her from getting hurt. It was all very gallant, which she hadn’t expected a few months prior, but she really didn’t mind.

  Kris lifted the weapon, pointed at the barriers, then pulled the trigger again, this time noting how it didn’t instantly shift upwards as easily. She could tell that the extra weight of the parallel barrel kept her hand from flinching as much when she fired. The rest would have to come from practice and conscious effort to prevent that habit.

  “I’m rushing a little, but let’s try a powered shot.” Mari set the shield down, and Kris headed for the lab to grab a handful of the little mana batteries she had been testing with.

  Then they resumed their position, and Kris did her best to stifle her nerves. The weapon wasn’t terribly different when she had it loaded. It was a little heavier, but that wasn’t much compared to how anxious she felt.

  Slowly, with the utmost caution, she moved her finger over the trigger, then aimed. At last, she pulled the trigger back and felt a very gentle shift in her hand as nothing happened. There was no sound, no kick, and no change in the barricades at the other end of their testing range.

  “It… did nothing.” Kris felt disappointment fill her as she sighed.

  Then Mari shook her head. “Let’s try again, but first—” She scooped up a clipboard with some papers from a random pod nearby, then leaned it up against the barricade before returning.

  Kris nodded, waited for an all-clear from Mari, then aimed again. When she pulled the trigger, the clipboard shuddered and fell, as if caught by a harsh wind from the left.

  “You’re going to need a sight built in, or contact lenses like mine to help you pick targets.”

  “That sounds helpful. I’d feel better knowing what you know about anything with the bioweapon in it.” Kris liked the idea, but also admitted she didn’t have a lot of knowledge that Mari seemed to have about technology of that type. “Actually, how did you make those contact lenses? They sound pretty complicated, but I didn’t think Marielle was an engineer or anything.”

  “She isn’t. One of her friends was one, so designing something based on his inventions wasn’t too hard. There are extra steps to it, but it’s a long story we don’t have time for. Want a pair?”

  Kris gave her a firm nod, then held up the magic gun again, peering down the barrel and trying to think of all the improvements and other tests she would need to do. How many shots could a single sphere power? How often could she fire it? Interestingly, a completely silent weapon was almost less useful than Mari’s exceedingly loud Remera. If she were ever separated from Mari, she would still hear that handgun from pretty long distances. Not having a decent impact feedback would complicate her ability to tell if she hit a target or not.

  So many issues, so little time.

  Kris sank into thought while Mari did some arcane fiddling in the air with her hands and after a moment, headed back to the lab. She’d designed her weapon without too much consideration. Analog sights would be helpful, so she started there. Instead of lining them up with the barrel, she realized that they’d need to line up with the engraved geometric pathways that set the vector for the shot. Not that those two things were different in the current case, though.

  The next topic to cover was the lack of a sound when firing. She hadn’t narrowed down the geometric design that created noise yet, but she had a few ideas. Still, they’d have to wait.

  Her next issue would be with ammunition. The best approximation she had was something that could measure the amount of mana remaining inside of the current sphere. The gun could hold four spheres inside, and she could eject the topmost one when it ran dry, but without much feedback, she could be firing on an empty power source without realizing. That wasn’t ideal.

  Kris got back into work mode, designing a sensor system that could fit onto her prototype as she tuned out the world around her.

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