The Magician

The Magician    

    The hallways of this part of the building were impressively dreary. There were no paintings or pictures on the walls. The doors were unmarked save for room numbers. The walls were a blank slate of white. The floors were made of soft white tile. The ceiling was made of tile fixtures, air vents, light fixtures, and small speakers.

    In one of these seemingly soulless offices sat a man. He wore a long, thick, dark gray dress coat. It looked soft to the touch and fell to his knees if he stood. He wore a vest and slacking dress pants made of the same thick material. His chest was covered with a white shirt with a small collar and a black tie that hugged snugly against the tip of his neck and wreathed his figure. His most outstanding clothing for the modern time period he lived in was his tall top hat. The cuffs of his coat seemed worn. String hung from them as if his jacket were too old, but these were no normal strings. His clothes wrapped round his figure tightly as if tailored just for him. They hung around his waist as if wound with a belt. His shoes appeared to be dress shoes except for their snug fit and loose material which hinted an ability to be run in with ease. All his clothing was heavier than most others'. If a bullet shot into his coat it could become wrapped in netted armor that lay inside the cloth. There were many pockets in his coat that he knew of, but others wouldn't be able to see.

    He had a small trimmed beard that wrapped around his chin. His hair shimmered shades of brown and bronze in the light. It dangled from the tip of his hairline like spider legs while the rest laid on his head as if someone had streaked it back with their hands. It had strands of graying hair that stood alone. All traces of his boyish appearance someone still might have in their twenties had faded over the years. He looked to be a man in his late thirties or early forties. His figure didn't seem threateningly strong nor easily defeatable.

    His arms moved fluently about his desk, grabbing things at seemingly random.

    He'd just been caught on his computer stealing funds from the government's pockets. A clever hacker forced to work for the government had found their way into his computer's signal, turned his computer's camera on, and looked right at his face.

    He tugged a drawer open and grabbed a metal box shaped just like deck box for playing cards. He curved a screw at the back of it clockwise and the metal box snapped open. Seemingly average playing cards with not a single mark on them sat inside. He slid them out into his hands and slid them inside various spots on his jacket. A few went inside a pocket hidden in the groove between his shoulder and his arm. He slid some underneath the cuffs of his sleeves. Still more were hidden underneath the collar of his jacket and various other spots a person wouldn't think to look.

    He started to hear swift footsteps hit the floor hard outside in the hall. It sounded like two pairs of feet striking the ground with strong legs.

    He kept his mind calm as his hands danced around the room, trying to think his way through. His mind was strong enough to break through any trap.

    Knuckles didn't bother to wrap on the door. Nor did they bother to use the handle. A strong soldier wearing a gray uniform smacked into the door with his weight and let it fall to the ground. The lock he had snapped into place earlier flicked off the wall like a nail hammered through the other side of the wall.

    The man with the top hat stood with his back to them. He seemed to be fiddling with his left hand, shaking it inside his jacket with impatience. He turned around to two soldiers pointing machine guns towards his chest. He went to snatch a pack of gum from his desk, but in the time it took him to walk those two steps to his desk again one of the soldiers had tackled him. Momentary disorientation seized him as the soldier thrust him against the wall. The soldier's weight pinned against him as if he was caught between two walls.

    "Awe, c'mon guys," he said with a compressed laugh. "You can't be serious. This isn't necessary. I was only reaching for a pack of gu-"

    The soldier shoved the man's stomach into the wall with his hand, squeezing his diaphragm. He snatched his hands and folded them one by one in front of his stomach.

    The man with the timely inappropriate suit could hear the metallic jingle as the soldier pulled out cuffs. He felt cold steel wrap around his wrists as he heard the strange zip sound handcuffs made as they compressed.

    He smiled up at the ceiling and laughed to himself in disbelief. The soldier, with one hand on his cuffs and another on the man's shoulder, lead him out of the room following the second soldier into the hall. They calmly walked, their footsteps out of sequence of each other.

    "Do you have any gum?" said the man in the top hat.

    The soldier said nothing after a few beats.

    "Because I could really use some gum; A bit self conscious about my breath. See?" The man huffed a breath in the direction of one of the soldier's faces. "Horrible, smelly, smells like really bad eggs. I really need it. I know you have it."

    The soldier gave in. He stopped the walk and stared at the man in cuffs. After a beat he reached inside a pocket on his vest and took out a small pack of gum. He unwrapped a white piece of mint. The man opened his mouth larger than needed, then stopped. He blew a strand of spider leg-like hair out of his face and opened his mouth again. The soldier reluctantly placed the white gum on the man's teeth. The man slid it inside his mouth with his teeth and chewed briefly as the soldier turned to keep walking.

    "Ah! Two pieces…"

    The soldier stopped in the middle of his first step and looked at the man's patient expression.

    "Please?"

    The soldier stared at him again before reaching for another white piece of mint.

    "Last one, bub."

    He repeated the action and slid the piece of gum on the man's teeth. He smiled back at him without showing his teeth, almost the way a clown would smile; The smile of a madman.

    As the soldier turned away to continue their decent down the hall, the madman smiled with his face averted forward, his eyes dipping into the top of his eyelids like the reverse of a sun on the horizon. This was the smile of an evil, deceitful, man, his plans playing out like chess pieces on a board. He almost laughed as they walked on.

    "They say you have a nickname," said the second soldier.

    "Do they?"

    "The Magician."

    "The Magician, I quite like that name."

    "Why?"

    "Well, it has a nice ring to it don't you-"

    "No, why The Magician?"

    "Oh, oh. Yes, of course. Maybe… Maybe it's just the outfit."

    The gum had turned from a harder substance to two mashes in his mouth. He had been careful not to mesh them together. An air of mint felt like a fist in his mouth.

    The second soldier looked to the side at the man's suit. It suggested he may have dropped out of the 1920s.

    The man began to suck the saliva out of the gum and swallow it all down his throat. It was ripe for his plans. He dropped the first piece from his lips down to his hands. His right hand caught it.

    The soldiers stared straight ahead as they turned a corner, heading for an elevator. He needed to pull this off before they reached it.

    "Aren't you going to read me my rights?"

    "That's really not-"

    The madman quickly shot his hands like darts low at the soldier. He didn't strike him. He left the first piece of gum wedged in the small place between the trigger and the handle.

    "-how this works."

    "Oh boy… I am in trouble…"

    "Trouble is getting jumped in an alleyway. It's coming down to your last bullet. It's being outnumbered two to one. It's your first parachute failing after a jump. What you're in? It's not trouble. You're already dead."

    "Am I now?"

    The soldier laughed.

    "Well, then. Would you boys care to join me then?" The Magician's right hand pulled on his left, making a fake hand fall out of his left sleeve rendering the cuffs useless. His elbow struck at the first soldier's nose, the momentum of the strike aimed through his face instead of at. The second soldier instantly raised his weapon to shoot, but no sound burst into the air. The soldier squeezed his trigger only to find it jammed.

    The Magician worked the components of the first soldier's gun until it was disassembled too much for use. He ripped off the slide and the hammer before the soldier could lean against the wall as his hand snatched at his face with with dark blood.

    The Magician threw himself into a turn as if in a fast dance and slammed the second soldier's gun into his face as he started to reach for his handgun. He then threw the gun into the other soldier's gut, throwing the second soldier strapped to the gun at the wall in the process. His head left a spot of blood on the wall where he hit. The man snapped off the strap of the gun around the soldier's shoulder with a sudden flick of a playing card. It had snapped into his fingers like magic, coming from one of his many hiding spots.

    The magician snapped the card back into whatever hiding place it came from. He reached under the trigger and stretched the gum off the metal. He cocked the gun with his other hand with a satisfying metallic cluck sound. He threw the gun in an ark across the soldier's bodies as he squeezed the trigger. Blood shot into the air like pepper from a shaken shaker.

    He loosened his grip on the machine gun hilt and let it hang from his hands before dropping it with distaste. One of the men appeared to be still breathing. He didn't look to see who. He only snagged a hand grenade on one of the soldier's vests and calmly ripped out the pin. The lever flicked off the grenade as if tossed lightly into the air by an invisible man. He let it slip through his fingers and dance across the floor as he walked away from the duo. The soldier made a small choked sound. He reached inside his mouth for the second piece of gum as he walked over to a security camera sticking out between the ceiling and the wall, a small six yards away, just in front of the elevator. He stuck the white mush over the lens and examined it for any room to spy through. He then looked at the ground to his right, thinking. He had only planned up to here.

    "Now what?"

    The grenade sitting with the dying soldiers blew apart behind him. The ceiling rained plaster and metal in every direction. The Magician glanced behind him at the carnage and looked away again. He was unaffected by the death of someone who might have been a father, unaffected by the death of a man who was young enough to have been getting married in mere months.     

    An obnoxious alarm blew into his eardrums. He heard the elevator ding in between the beats of the alarm and rolled his eyes.

    "I never have any time to myself these days," he sighed.

    He walked into the elevator door and began to wedge his fingers in between the doors. The fake left hand, cuffed to his real right hand, dangled and smacked him in the face. He ripped the fake hand out of the cuffs with an annoyed stare. He slid the two doors across their tracks and out of his way. He could see the elevator ascending to him just below. He dragged his hands across the chest of his jacket as he stared down at it. A card seemed to flick into his hands from nowhere. He bent the card into a C shape and flicked it into the elevator shaft.  It shimmied through the air at the thick cables parallel to the elevator shaft.

    The card slid across the many wires held in a row and snapped them apart as if they were never whole in the first place. The elevator made a jolt sound and then screeched as it fell. He heard men scream in alarm as the elevator sparked and shook, falling without grace.

    Just a story below him, the elevator stopped. It looked to be resting on a slant, jammed.

    The soldiers cried out for help.

    A soldier on the other side ripped the doors open and offered his hands out to help. He really thought he was going to save someone's life. He had seen too many movies where people escaped faulty elevators just in time.

    Only a small top portion of the floor's entryway was open to a small bottom portion of the elevator's doorway. One soldier let himself be the first to begin the climb out. Half his body hung over the floor as if he was climbing out of the top shelf of a bookshelf.

    The Magician frowned and threw his hands up with exasperation before resting them on his sides. He put one hand on his top hat as he jumped from the ledge and slammed his feet onto the upper side of the slanted elevator.

    The hit disheveled the elevator and cut a man into two, losing an arm and a shoulder, as it resumed its fall. It created the sound of bone, muscle, and skin being pinched apart. It wasn't a sound that was similar to a bone breaking or a blade scratching skin. No one there would be able to tell what it sounded like if they lived through the scene. The man screamed too loud to hear anything else. Blood began to drip from the floor's entryway the same way rain dripped from the edges of buildings. It looked like the elevator entrance to Hell.

    The Magician threw himself horizontally and grabbed onto the ceiling's edge of the second opened doorway before he gave gravity the chance to swallow him with the elevator. He grabbed the neck of the concerned soldier and threw him down behind him. The soldier screamed in terror as he shared the death of the people he had tried to save. The Magician jumped down onto the ledge and tread carefully to avoid the eyes of the camera. He walked until he found himself just underneath it. He flicked another card into his hands and slid it across the wires in back of the camera. It sparked a faint blue light and seised it's recording. He suavely moved his hand across his chest as the card disappeared somewhere behind the fold of his jacket's chest.

    The Magician began to walk as the elevator slammed into the bottom of the building, along with their almost-savior. The man who was cut in half suddenly stopped screaming.

    "Good luck explaining that one to the insurance company," he said to himself.

    The magician walked quickly towards the stairway door and shoved it open impatiently. A turret turned towards him like a cat spooked and began to spit bullets at him. The Magician, having not walked out in front of the door just yet, bent his torso backwards to avoid the jackhammer of bullets. He closed the door behind him.

    "No, definitely not that way…"

    He put his hands on his hips and thought for a moment, fighting his way through confusion to a solution. His eyes looked right, left, and to the floor. Then he looked up. He saw a vent to his left. He swiftly grabbed the edge of his jacket with his left hand and opened it to his right. His right hand pulled out a single metal hoop. He looked at it for a second and swung at the vent. The single hoop shot out into several hoops. The last hoop clung around the vent's bars as if it had always been looped around it. The man tugged hard and the hoops bent the vent and ripped it away from the ceiling.

    The vent clattered to the floor. With just a flick of his wrist the hoops disappeared one by one and only a single sat in his hands again. He replaced it inside his jacket.

    The vent hole was just too high to reach. The magician took his hat off and tossed it like a frisbee to the ground. It hit the floor without bending. He put his foot on the hat without hesitation and leaned his weight on it. The hat didn't yield, but stayed still as a tree stump in the ground. He stepped up on the hat like a stool and jumped slightly up at the hole in the ceiling.

    He'd gotten his body halfway up into the vent when he noticed a colorless gas blew into the vents with a small hiss. It was either a colorless gas or he was seeing blurs without having taken a hallucinogen. His vision inside the vent blurred as he looked through the gas as it blowed. He saw a spark and reacted instinctively. He shifted his hand from the sides of the vent to the air, fell through the hole, and landed with his knees bent low as fire puffed from inside the vent like a tongue licking around to taste his skin.

    He turned around and noticed two guards. They must have come when he was two legs dangling from the ceiling. They had their hands up, shielding themselves from the tongue of fire.

    The Magician snatched another card from the hidden pocket in the groove between his shoulder and his arm. He struck it across the first soldier's neck, peppering blood into the air. A portion of the blood flecked onto the magician's neck and felt like water. It drizzled down his body like fingers dragging lightly across his skin.

    He reached down with his other hand to pick up his top hat. The second soldier snatched him by the collar and pulled up his fist for a strike. The magician put his hat over the man's head and his face disappeared inside of it. The man stopped moving as the sound of a brief thud came from underneath the hat. The portion of his body below the hat was all that dropped to the floor. Ninety percent of his body dropped like a heavy doll.

    "Satan's architect designed this place…" he said to himself as he glanced up at the tongue of fire dancing out of the hole in the ceiling.

    Then he heard footsteps beat against the floor like a bad drummer. They were getting louder; closer. He turned his hat upside down to see a blade in front of the hat's interior. He reach his hand inside and the blade retracted into many blades and sank into slender V shapes into the sides of the hat. A head was inside. The decapitation had been so fast no blood had even spilled. The magician snagged the soldier's grenade off his body and in a split second the lever was flying off it. He shoved the grenade up the head's throat and twirled his hat in an arc towards the corner of the hallway, making the head fly out.

    The soldiers turned the corner, their guns raised. The magician merely turned around, unconcern carved into his face, as the head blew into more red slivers than the soldiers' bodies.

    The blades shifted out of the hat's edges and formed a circle again in front of the interior. He replaced it on top of his head and let go of it as it balanced perfectly to his circumference. He looked behind him once to make sure all was dead, then did a double take, but not from a surprising living victim. He cocked his head back as he stared at a hole in the wall. He looked away, thinking, then walked towards the soldiers. He picked up a gun and realized it was too bent up. He picked up another and realized a hand was still holding it, minus its body. He shook it off impatiently as if it was a leaf stuck to his shoe and walked away.

    He was walking towards the elevator he broke until he turned to the left. Blood was still drip dropping from the elevator entryway like the aftermath of rain. He found himself in front of a door marked with the number 405. He took his hat off, put it over the doorknob and heard a loud metallic rattle. When he took the hat away the doorknob was gone. What was left of it fell off the door. He kicked it open with his steel toe shoes.

    He saw a storage room inside. Inside were old filing cabinets, brown file folders stacked inside old rickety shelves, and some old chairs. Why anyone would lock a door this escaped him. He closed the door behind him. He sighed as he pointed the machine gun at the wall almost absent minded. He squeezed the trigger and shot holes into the wall until it was ripped to shambles. He tossed the machine gun aside like a toddler with an old toy and walked over to the wall. He ripped the swiss cheese-like plaster down with a tug. First he put half his body inside as if to test it.

    Then he walked out and grabbed a filing cabinet by the wall. He pulled them all over from one wall to the hole and surrounded it. Lastly, he put a filing cabinet in front of him, dragging it as he walked backwards into the hole. It was as if he was never there.

    He dragged his body through the narrow walls, scraping his sides against the interior. He traveled slowly like this for what felt like near an hour. He could hear people run by him from the other side of the wall. He could hear confused and angry shouts as people looked for him. There wasn't a hallway absent the sound of running boots. He went on until he came to an impassable, thick, metal wall. This was the only way to know for sure he had arrived to his destination. He had been outside these walls before and memorized everything about the vault's guard. He only didn't know how to steal what was inside until now, when he had no other choice but to. He flicked a card into his hand that seemed to fly like a butterfly out of the bottom of his jacket. He nicked it across specific wires sticking in all directions above his head. He wouldn't have to worry about an alarm with gun turrets that couldn't turn on.

    He carefully took out a grenade and placed it against the wall. He tugged on the strings coming off the cuffs of his sleeves. They weren't strings coming off his jacket like they seemed, but combat wire. He tied the very thin wire to the grenade's pin and walked back the way he came. The wire dangled by his sleeve like a loose bit of string. It wiggled as its lining ran out of his sleeve with each careful step. He was careful not to make a sound. This was, in a way, the part of his magic trick the audience couldn't see. He placed another grenade at another specific spot and attached wire from his sleeve to it. He found his way to the wall across from the one he was inside after many twists and turns. He placed grenades there as well. In the end, seven strings dangled from his sleeve. The only way they would be triggered was if he tugged on them with his fingers while preventing them from being loosened by his sleeve.

    When he was done he paused, staring at the wall he was squeezed inside. He slammed himself to the side into brick, instead of wood and plaster which he was surrounded by. The old bricks crumpled loose. He slammed against them again. They became disheveled. He slammed against them again and again until he found himself falling over onto a pile of old bricks. He coughed from the debris and got on his back as he kicked a fireplace hood away from him. He crouched his head low as he walked out of a fireplace, into a living room and dusted himself off. A lady pouring coffee looked at him. He looked back and gave her a pleasant smile. The lady's coffee began to overflow and she didn't seem to notice nor return his smile. He walked on through the homey living area and used the first door he saw in the direction he desired. It lead to a small hall with a colorfully brown wooden ceiling, floor, and walls. A man with glasses sitting at his desk spit out his water when he saw the man in the old fashioned suit. He got up immediately and gestured to him.

    "You can't go through there!"

    The Magician looked over at him with a teasing smile. "Well, of course I can. We always have the choice. It's the consequence we just might not have any sway over. Life is but a dream, only the consequences make our reality. However, if you can escape the consequences who's to say life can't be like a dream? What do you think? If you pick up that gun in your drawer do you think you can escape the consequence?"

    The man seemed nervous. He didn't answer him. He only let him walk by and chose not to pick up that gun. The Magician seemed satisfied as he walked on through the short hall. He opened the door and came out into another main hallway just as colorfully designed as the last. To the left lead to two closed doors. To the right lead to several armed guards armed with monstrous weapons; grenade launchers.

    The Magician smirked like a devil. "This was a good idea," he said more to himself before yelling out loud to the guards, "Good evening, ladies!"

    The guards immediately raised their weapons. One seemed to glance at the alarm's bulb on the ceiling as if questioning why it hadn't gone on when he clearly squeezed its remote.

    The Magician laughs, sarcastically nervous or just plain bad at acting so. "Do you know why they call me the magician?"

    "HANDS UP!" yells the deep throat of a man with his finger on the trigger.

    The Magician put his hands up, feeling the thin cords of the wires against his skin flow out of his sleeve and skid across his skin.

    "Awe, you're curious! Come over here, I'll whisper it one of your ears."

    A soldier, not responding to his summons, walked briskly towards him to arrest him. He had in his hands a set of peculiar looking restraints made to latch someone's hands to their chest painfully tight.

    "Now, don't go telling all you're friends," said the Magician sarcastically. He scoffed a small snicker at them. The soldier reached him and put his hand tight on his shoulder. The Magician whispered so only he could hear, "They call me the magician because I make people disappear."

    The Magician snatched at the wires invisible to the guards and tugged hard on them. The guards standing near the walls were blown off their feet to the literal and figurative point. Blood, bones, bits of flesh, debris, and dust vomited into the air. Smoke started to eat the oxygen in the room.

    The guard in front of The Magician was shaken only for a second, but it was that second where he could have saved his own life. The Magician snapped his hat over his head and it was never to be seen on its shoulders again. He walked towards the vault, a serious look on his face now. He calmly picked up a disheveled looking grenade launcher, twirled it around, and took aim behind him. The sound of tons of guards running through the hall began to play behind the two wooden doors. Shouts of orders could be heard among the trampling feet. The footsteps sounded like the impact of heavy men. The Magician knelt down on one knee to get out of the smoke filling up the area quickly. His eyes started to tear at the flames around him. He felt no fear, only the pain of impatience as the first man smacked the door open, a pistol raised. The last look on his face was one of surprise when the Magician simply smiled and pulled the trigger. A father of four wasn't coming home tonight. Neither was a sweet girl's boyfriend who was just behind him. Nor was a woman who ate alone and lived at work. Countless others wouldn't be walking out of that building ever again. The last sound their eyes witnessed wasn't heard by their ears as it exploded where they stood. The Magician pulled the trigger again and again until the doorway to the next hall was only fire, ashes, burnt bodies, and twisted metal. He let go of the grenade launcher and let it strike the ground as he walked towards the vault.

    "That should give you and me enough time, sweetie," he said more to the vault than to himself. Smoke had filled the room by now. The madman snatched an expensive looking gas mask off a soldier and fitted it to his face. It must've been expensive to breathe without a tank of air to carry around. His breathing quickly started to sound like Darth Vader.

    He pulled out of his jacket a small object that appeared to be a laser pointer. He looked carefully at the small glass lens in the middle of the circular vault door. His finger switched the laser on and a thin blue line appeared in the air. He attempted to point it vertically inside the lens, but nothing happened. He tried again from several angles, but the vault didn't react. He turned off the laser and turned to the side, thinking.

    "Perfectly vertical," he mumbled to himself. His eye caught sight of a broken monitor hanging on the wall. He walked over to it and shook it several times. It comically stayed as if nailed to the wall. He got annoyed and flicked one of his cards into the air and let it fall behind the monitor. He got it off the wall with one more tug and carried it over to the floor. He shoved away debris and kicked away a perfectly black body absent life. He placed the monitor on the level ground and placed the laser on top of it. He switched the laser on again. He corrected his aim and shot the laser into the tiny lens on the vault. The lens flickered red and then green. The Magician smiled and got up. He placed the laser back into his jacket pocket as the monitor fell smacked to the ground absent balance.

    The engraved writing and markings moved on the shiny metallic vault as it moved, unlocking. The massive circular door began to churn on its hinges as it opened up towards him. Lights lit up inside the vault. The interior was made of wood, though underneath the wood, just like the outer shiny metal, must have been some kind of condensed concrete made to withstand the weight of a hundred elephants on their heels. In the center of the vault lay a small stand with a red cushion on top of it. On top of this cushion was an object that looked to be the shape of a knife's blade. It was wrapped in an expensive cloth made to repel dust more than look pretty. The Magician walked inside and took the object off its stand. He seized the cloth off the object and tucked it inside his pocket. He didn't look away from the object as soldiers on black ropes reeled down from the ceiling outside the vault door as it swung shut again. The area inside the vault was plagued by a slight mist due to the smoke that had escaped inside from the carnage outside.

    The object was very old. It was heavy and made of metal. The middle of it was shaped like a pencil. The surrounding metal attached to the middle was stretched wide and thin. It was a blade absent a hilt. It looked like it could almost be considered the blade part of a greek short sword. The blade was in no way shiny. It looked more like dirt than it did metal, but still sharper than the teeth of broken glass. It was a spear absent its shaft.

    It was quieter inside the vault than it was outside it. He couldn't hear their yelling or their shouts into radios for the code to the vault. He couldn't hear the shouts back on the radio that there was no code. Only an untraceable laser placed on exact coordinates could unlock it. They would have to wheel their own laser attached to its stand out from the basement floor, line it up exactly with the floor, connect it with latches, and turn it on. He had ten minutes, maybe more since it may take them awhile to find those latches on the ground what with so much debris. The Magician only needed a few moments.

    "Truly, God still does the greatest magic tricks of all," he said to himself as he twirled the blade in the air, caught it, slammed it down onto the ground and was there no more. He wasn't in that building. He wasn't at that time or place.

    What he did was never amazing to him, but to the viewpoint of the building's occupants it was nothing short of. They looked inside every room, pumped poison throughout the air vents, locked down all the side exits, and guarded the stairs with turrets and their deadly accuracy.

    This was not a moral man. His conscience told him to do the wicked thing instead of the just and gave him guilt if he willed otherwise. He saw fear in a person's face as something more beautiful than a person's laugh. With a few keystrokes he could know anything about everyone from who broke their heart in high school to what meal they ate last. He was guilty of all the nastier sins and was an amoral villain to even the most corrupt minded. His dark deeds were so mysterious they were like magic. He was nicknamed The Magician.

    Twelve minutes later, the soldiers found no man inside. They found no hidden exit or evidence of any exit he could have made. The thing that upset a man in a black suit more than anything was they didn't find the Holy Lance either.

    The man in the black suit smiled to himself with anger; His eyes showing malice while his lips showed admiration.

    "How'd you do that?" he whispered to himself.

    He could almost hear his condescending reply inside his head, "A magician never reveals his secrets."

    "Only you could lock yourself in a vault and not be found when we open the door."