by S. M. Savoy
“Ah,” the man said as if enlightened. He left the room and the screen flickered. A new man entered, and Rick realized it was a different day. Sara rose from the corner where she’d been crouched and backed as far as she could go.
“We want you to show us this heal.”
“You’ve seen it.” She rubbed her face, and the man grabbed her chin, tipping her head but he released her in moments and wiped his hands on his pants.
“There’s no denying it works,” the first man said, giggling as he stroked Sara’s hair.
Sara cringed but let him touch her. She said, “Sometimes, but it doesn’t work that well either. The passive regeneration effect works better. I really can’t remove it. Please, don’t hurt them,” Sara begged. “If you remove it, it will release this gas.” She gestured at the magic that fluttered around her. “It’s dangerous and uncontainable and bonded to the new nerves. The gas will stay with them. Please, I’m telling you everything I know. I discovered it by accident and I’m not sure what it is. You know I’m telling the truth! I’ll help you. I can try to give you the heal too, just please stop.”
The magic surrounding her disappeared.
“Does your boyfriend have any modifications? He doesn’t appear to have this heal.”
“No, he doesn’t even know I do.” Sara started to cry. “Please, I’m begging you. I’ll do whatever you want.”
The man tapped the paper. “We want this!” The second man grabbed the first’s arm and they argued heatedly in Vietnamese.
“What are they saying?” Rick asked.
“Arguing on whether to fulfil their contract or not.”
Which is?”
Nelson said nothing
On the screen Sara said, “There’s no guarantee that my child would be as smart as I am.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and turned pleading blue eyes on her captor.
“That’s why we have him. You cooperate, or he suffers.”
Sara nodded. “Let me go to him, please.” She glanced at the paper again, and her hands clenched. “My father gave you this?”
“No, he sold us that. We’re renting you. When we’re done, he gets you back.”
“He gets all of us?”
The man smiled at her. “When we get what we want. First, we want you to try to heal what we did to his hands.”
Sara nodded. The man pulled her into the other room. She reached a trembling hand to Oz, acted like she was trying very hard, and then casted her weakest heal.
The man leaned over Oz, staring at the blood oozing from Oz’s lacerated arm. His eyes widened as the blood slowed to a trickle. “That will do. How often can you do it?”
“A few times a day.” Sara fell over Oz as if she couldn’t stand. “It’s tiring and hard to do. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. We really aren’t a threat.
“He knows more than me. He could probably tell you more if you let him wake. You can’t keep him under like this or he’ll get brain damage.”
The first man giggled, making Rick’s skin crawl.
The man pulled her off Oz and patted her cheek. He shoved her into another room and Rick gasped, his heart thudding hard even though he knew Stasia was safe in the other room.
A girl with hair her exact shade and style lay on a stretcher in a dimly lit room. Her face was to the wall and a blanket covered her chest, ending at her knees. She wore the same sort of manacles Oz had.
“Stasia,” Sara moaned, and the doctor laughed that high-pitched giggle that rose the small hairs on Rick’s arms.
The doctor said, “I don’t think you’re telling us everything. We’ve fixed the connector now. If you mess with your bonds again, well…” He turned to the door and said something in Vietnamese to someone off camera. A moment later a new man entered the room with the girl.
“Your friends haven’t been too cooperative. We’ve killed this one’s brother already but maybe you can save her.”
The man in the room used a long pole to tap on the latch on the manacle on the girl’s neck. Rick jerked back and closed his eyes from the explosion that followed. When he opened them, the doctor had turned a smiling face to Sara. Blood and bits of bone were sprinkled about the room like gruesome confetti.
Sara crouched sobbing at the doctor’s feet, grasping the manacle on her neck as the doctor said something in Vietnamese.
“Stop, please! I’m—”
The doctor slapped her cheek, clearly angry that she couldn’t or wouldn’t heal the injury. “You’re nothing.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a needle and injected her in the arm.
Nelson hit pause. “I have no idea if she knew that wasn’t Stasia or not. You don’t need to see the rest. Sara was clever, and they believed her. They thought removing the m-nerve removed the danger from them. They removed them and ensured their cooperation. Those men have no idea it’s magic. They think it’s tech she dreamed up and her genetics make her smart.”
Rick pushed play.
Nelson turned away.
Grainy footage played of Sara unmoving and obviously unaware of her surroundings. She wasn’t tied just placed on a metal table in a small, dank room. She still wore the thick metal manacle on her neck and leg and a simple hospital gown although it was stained now.
Water marks marred the walls. Dented metal tables held medical implements on trays and Rick wondered when the footage was taken. It was clearly a different day. The doctor wore different clothing as did Oz. Oz was tied to a similar table and dressed the same as Sara.
The doctor cut Oz’s hands and arms opened again and removed pieces. Rick turned white when the man started to saw on his head. He groaned when Oz woke and the man kept sawing. Oz started screaming as the man cut into his brain and Rick closed his eyes. Sara woke as he was screaming and began screaming too. Deep gasping sobs swayed her body as she vomited. She huddled on the floor with her head buried in her arms as the man continued his gruesome work while Oz screamed and begged her for help and her magic swirled in a frenzy.
The other man entered and tried to capture a sample and swore as the magic began sparking. Sara fainted and her magic returned to her body as if she’d vacuumed it up, which made the men talk excitedly amongst themselves a moment. The man finished with Oz and picked her up.
The doctor ran his hands over her arms, his smile growing before he held a vial under her nose, and she woke coughing. The doctor laughed as he chattered, his words undecipherable to Rick. He brought her to the doorway and dropped her. They argued for a moment, then Sara casted a heal-over-time on Oz. The man patted her head and wheeled Oz from the room. “Why isn’t she fighting?” Rick moaned.
The major stopped the video. “The doctor said he had Charlie and if she didn’t cooperate they wouldn’t let her try to heal him. If she cooperated, they’d let her heal Oz when they were done. They can kill her remotely in a second with that bomb strapped to her neck. There’s nothing she can do, and she knows it. He timed it perfectly so Oz would wake and scare her to death.”
Rick hit play and the major turned it off again.
“That’s enough.”
Rick turned his blue-eyed glare on the major and hit play again. The major threw his hands up and stalked away. On the screen, the doctor entered and strapped Sara tightly to the table. He cut her hands open while she screamed and begged. When he was done, he stood back. She tried but couldn’t heal herself. He removed the manacles and watched a while, checking her vitals and hooking her to monitors.
“I think he’s making sure she’s healing before he continues,” Nelson said softly.
The man wrapped her hands in bandages and put an IV in her arm as the other man carried the covered tray containing the ripped-out nerves away. He held it at arm’s length, swaying away from the magic darting between him and Sara.
“How can he even touch her?” Rick asked.
“He’s a masochist, he loves her. He touches her all the time and smiles. He’s disappointed that
it stops hurting him after he removes her m-nerve. See him run his hands over her and frown?” Nelson pointed to the screen where the doctor was running his hands across Sara’s face and over her neck. Sara’s eyes were closed as she struggled weakly against her bonds.
The doctor frowned and ran his hands up her bare legs before stepping away and turning to the tray of medical implements.
“Never let Charlie see this.” Rick turned it off as the man started to cut her head open while she screamed and begged. Sweat trickled across his brow and he raced to the bathroom to vomit. Pale and shaken he returned to Stasia and Joy. Drew followed. The four of them huddled together in the magic, which sank to the floor at their feet unmoving.
- 19 -
Misdirection
Two days later they traveled to China. Major Nelson sent them with a list of businesses and homes to search. They traveled the country for a month and Charlie was frantic. Hawk and Todd had found leads but they never panned out.
Stasia and Joy brought mountains of papers and recordings back to the major.
Hawk called him. “Liniar has disappeared as have Nguyen and Tachimori but I have a solid lead. I know Tachimori has taken his boat and I want Stasia to go and find out what she can, but the major won’t send her. He says it’s a waste of time, that they weren’t involved but I think we need to check this. They’re still talking about a deal with Tomas. They must be in contact with him!”
Charlie immediately called Major Nelson. “Send Stasia—”
“Chief, I’m handling this. The leads here are better.”
“What leads?”
“Nothing you need to worry about, and I don’t have time to coddle you.”
Nelson hung up on him, and he called Stasia, too shocked to be angry. “I’m sending Brenda to you. I want her to see the papers. Major Nelson won’t answer my questions. He’s being very evasive.”
Stasia knew why the major wouldn’t answer, they hadn’t told Charlie about the recordings they’d recovered, but she agreed to sneak Brenda in.
“I hate doing this,” Brenda said as Stasia snuck her into the major’s room.
Stasia squeezed her shoulder. “It’ll put Charlie’s mind at ease, and who knows, maybe the major missed something. Some of the papers are in Chinese.”
Brenda read all the papers while Stasia watched the door for the major’s return. It took Brenda a day to read through them all.
Brenda said, “That was gruesome reading, I’m so glad they don’t remember it.”
“What?” Stasia rose an eyebrow as she turned to her.
“They don’t remember it. There’s an entire file about their recovery.” Brenda rummaged through the files.
Stasia took the paper Brenda handed her with shaking hands. “He didn’t tell us. Why wouldn’t he tell us that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought you knew?”
“God, I’ve been sick, literally sick over this! He should’ve told us! It would’ve been a huge relief to know that. I’ve been picturing them tied and helpless, waiting for that man to come back.”
“No, they don’t know. They don’t remember anything at all. It was all in that report.” Brenda tapped the file in Stasia’s hand.
“Read it to me!”
“You could read it yourself— it’s in English.” Brenda opened the folder and held out a paper.
Stasia paced. “Brenda, he had to know.”
“Yes.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” Brenda said worriedly.
“I don’t remember giving him this file. If Joy gave it to him, she would’ve told me. Brenda— he must have another source we don’t know about.” The two women stared at each other in mounting horror.
Stasia quit the raid and followed the major. Rick held her wristcomp in his hand. Copies of the report were spread across the bed in their hotel room. Glints of blue shone in his eyes as he put her wristcomp on his wrist to hide her whereabouts.
For four days Stasia followed Nelson while pretending to be elsewhere. She’d almost given up when a Chinese man approached him in a coffee shop, handed him an envelope and walked away. Stasia followed the man to a small flower shop where he entered the back and made a call. The man spoke Chinese, so she recorded it. Stasia shadowed the man as he made deliveries before returning to a nearby apartment. She made a note of the address before returning to Nelson.
She followed him from a local restaurant to the hotel they were staying in. He’d brought them dinner as usual. She released her invisible and joined them.
“Any leads today?” she asked as she took a few of the takeout containers from him.
“Nothing.”
Nelson told them about going to the library and the courthouse pursuing leads but made no mention of the man with the envelope.
Stasia pickpocketed the major and excused herself. In the room she shared with Rick, she opened the envelope. It contained a picture of Oz with a bandage around his head cuddled with Sara under a blanket in front of a big fire. Oz was kissing her. Sara’s deeply scared hand rested on his face. A picture window behind them showed the sun either setting or rising. A small bird sat on the windowsill. The furniture in the room appeared expensive.
She flipped the picture over. ‘They still believe they’re happily married.’ The picture cupped in her hand, she called Rick from a disposable phone.
By the time Rick arrived moments later magic swirled around the room in agitated gusts and eddies. Rick scanned the picture and sent it through Oz’s locate program. The magic began to send off sharp shocks of static.
Stasia glanced at the screen floating beside Rick, and her eyes flared brighter. “It’s a tropical place. That’s a Bonin petrel and it only lives in the southern hemisphere.”
Rick sat on the bed with his head in his hands. “He knew. The major knows right now where they are. Oh dear god, what will we tell Charlie?”
“The truth and right away before the major figures out we know and tells them, and they move them.” Stasia grabbed the picture back and put it in the envelope. “I’m going to go put this back, and then you’re going to invite me to the raid. Call Lee and send her south. Joy and I will watch Major Nelson and do what he tells us too. We’ll copy every piece of paper we gave him, and Charlie will go through them all. We shouldn’t have trusted him again.”
She tapped her wristcomp and Hawk answered. He paled as Stasia spoke.
“I can’t believe this,” he said when she’d finished.
“He might not be working on his own.”
“I’m on my way to Iraq.”
“Be careful. Liniar and Tomas don’t appear to know about the magic, but the general does.”
“Ha. No one will ever see me. And it won’t be mice I send in if I find he’s involved.”
“Make sure first,” Rick said.
“Be safe,” Hawk said and ended the call.
Stasia hugged Rick. “I feel your rage. Stay here. We have to hide it until we find them, and then they can feel ours.”
A moment later Stasia left the room and slipped the picture back into Nelson’s pocket. She sat and picked at her food.
“Where’d Rick go?” The major glanced up from his meal.
“Our room.” Stasia continued to pretend to eat. She’d never eat another thing he brought her. “I need a break from this.” She pushed back from the table and left the room.
Rick greeted her with swirling magic and a hard hug. “I’ve called Lee and sworn her to secrecy. She’s headed south. Todd is wearing her wristcomp, it’s the best I could do. Major Nelson shouldn’t notice unless he taps for info.”
“What do we do now?” Stasia’s voice was muffled in Rick’s shirt. “I can’t tell Charlie this.”
“I call my father, and we get Charlie home.”
“The major will know it’s a ruse.”
“Let him. We can tell him Charlie needs Dad. It wouldn’t be a
lie.”
“Call him.”
Rick called his father. “I need you to trust me and do something for me,” he said without preamble. “I need Charlie to go to you in Texas right away, and he can’t ask the major for permission to go. You or Mom need to pretend to be dying, a car accident or heart attack or something. Call his ship and get him sent home. Do it right now. Tell him its Project Blackout. I love you guys, and I’ll be home soon to explain.”
Stasia quit the raid again and snuck into the major’s room that night. She snuck out his files and copied everything she took.
“If Oz were here he could probably download the contents of his wristcomp for us to see,” she said bitterly to Rick.
“If Oz where here we wouldn’t have to do any of this.” Rick kissed Stasia hard on the mouth. “I love you. Be careful; he’s a snake.”
At three a.m., Stasia snuck into Joy’s room and woke her and Drew. Joy stared at the picture in her hand as her eyes filled with tears. Drew leaped from the bed and paced furiously around the room.
“Don’t let on you know. Lee needs time to find them.” Stasia pulled Drew back to the bed and pushed him down by Joy who stared blankly at the picture crumpled in her fist. “Act normally. Joy and I will follow him. Rick will meet Charlie.
“We should beat the truth out of him.” Low and angry, Drew’s voice shook. “First Rinto, now the major. I can’t believe this.” Drew took Stasia’s hand in his. “I swear to god, I had no idea.”
Stasia nodded and kissed his cheek. The magic darting between them made his sincerity clear. “Act normal. Don’t let him suspect we know. Brenda needs to be told.” She left them dumbfounded, sitting in bed holding hands.
The next day Stasia and Joy took turns following the major. Rick flew to Texas with copies of everything.
“Where’s Rick,” Nelson asked as he accepted the stack of papers Stasia had grabbed at random from an office workers desk.
“Sleeping. My nightmares keep him up.”
She ducked her head to hide her glare. The major said nothing.
* * *
Charlie received notice that his mother was dying and she wanted him to finish her Project Blackout for her. He rose both hands to cover his eyes, which had flared blue. Brenda had found something. Major Nelson had been lying to him. The magic within him pushed hard, and he locked it down ruthlessly. When he dropped his hands, his eyes were their normal brown color.