Birthright-The Technomage Archive Read Online Free

he do that?”
    “ To have some fun with his gullible grandson? It doesn’t matter why, anyway.” Swarley said with a small grin. He leaned up on his mattress and looked Ceril dead in the eyes. “And, um, make sure that you don’t mention it around school, all right? Especially to the teachers.”
    “ Why not?”
    “ Ceril, really?”
    “ What?” Ceril demanded. “I mean, Gramps told me not to tell you, but I did. And it’s fine. The world didn’t end or anything. So why are you telling me not to tell anyone else? Why are you acting like this?”
    Swarley’s shoulders dropped. “You don’t have the ‘Nets when you’re at your Gramps’ house.”
    Ceril furrowed his brow. “You’re being a jerk because I don’t have the ‘Nets over the summer? Swarley—”
    “ No,” Swarley said. “I don’t mean…” He sighed. “You haven’t heard, then.”
    “ Heard what? What are you talking about?”
    Swarley got off his bed and sat down at his side of the desk. “Hold on,” he said, “let me find it.” He manipulated the terminal for a few minutes, and when he was satisfied with whatever it was he had found, he leaned back and let Ceril watch the first newsreel he had seen since before the summer began.
    Above the desk, a hologram of a woman began to discuss what she called “the first in what is sure to be a series of unprovoked attacks from a terrorist organization led by someone called the Untouchable.” Ceril sat down on Swarley’s bed and leaned forward as the image of the woman faded away. It was replaced by a video of a playground scene. “Please be advised,” the woman’s voice continued, “the images you are about to see are incredibly graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.”
    Kids were screaming and running around, probably toward their parents. Parents were yelling for their children, but only a few actually found them. The camerawork was bad; it was obviously a quick video someone had taken with their tablet or PDA.
    But that didn’t matter. The quality of the video wasn’t important. What it captured was.
    The video zoomed in, and Ceril covered his mouth with his hands as he watched. A group of men and women were wearing long, purple robes and holding golden swords. Swords that looked an awful lot like the one he found in Gramps’ garden.
    Ceril swallowed audibly.
    There were maybe half a dozen of the robed figures, and they were all bald, even the women. The men had identical, chest-length beards that were dyed a garish blue.
    And they were all using their swords to kill the running children. If there had been only one weapon, he would have assumed someone had stolen the sword from Gramps. After all, Gramps had said theirs was probably the only one. Ceril watched as the cameraman whipped the camera around the scene, catching parents and children being gutted, stabbed, dismembered, and eviscerated.
    “ Swarley, what the hell?”
    “ Just watch, Ceril.”
    Ceril did. The swords that the robed killers held were glowing now. One of the women cut through a man’s arm, and her blade flared yellow. She turned around and immediately sliced a running mother down the length of her back, while the glow around the sword pulsed blue. As the mother fell, she covered her son with her body in an attempt to protect him.
    Her body shook as she lay there, and Ceril realized she was weeping. The video tried to zoom in further, but it just distorted the image. Ceril thought he could see the woman with the yellow-blue sword rush toward her and plunge the sword downward.
    Even in the low-quality video, it was easy to see the sword penetrate through her body and into her son. The sword’s aura erupted in a flare of color as the bald killer shrieked. She laughed girlishly as she pulled the blade from the corpses she created.
    The cameraman, who had been silent until this point, let out a whimper, which caught the attention of the largest of the men. His head whipped toward the camera. He wiped his