Divided by Magic

by Rebecca Danese

  "I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything," I say defensively.

  "Well, stranger, it has a lot to do with a lot of things, but I hear what you’re saying. Augurs are people like you and I but different. I’ll look at the data on the stick and see what I can do with it for you and your friends." He plugs the stick into the side of his computer and taps away for a few minutes. I would have imagined Marvin to put some sort of low level security on it, but Matthew doesn’t seem to be stopped and gets right into it.

  He taps and clicks and scrolls for several minutes and I sit there, not sure if I should leave him to it.

  "Don’t you want to know what’s on it?" he asks me.

  "Er, okay," I say, even though I don’t really want to know at all. I’m starting to find that the more I know the worse it gets, but curiosity gets the better of me and I come round to his side of the messy desk to read over his shoulder.

  He’s flicking through documents, some with pictures of a very young-looking Munday with a group of doctors, a group of politicians, shaking hands with various people that I’m clueless about. There’s a scan of his ID for something called ‘FADE’.

  "What’s FADE?" I ask aloud. Matthew clicks on it and zooms into the image of a keycard, the kind you would swipe to open a security door. Facility for Augur Detention & Experimentation: Head of Research, Carlton Munday MD.

  "Looks like you were right, Munday was connected to something strange," Matthew says, closing the image and opening up a folder entitled Experiments. There are several hand written and typed reports of various procedures carried out on Augurs of all ages and abilities. Some of the experiments are as simple as drugging the subject and seeing how it effects their abilities, but others include bathing the person in electrical impulses and determining whether it dampens or enhances their powers. Although at first none of the names are familiar, I can see that the ages of the Augurs tested ranged from the age of four or five up to their eighties.

  He flicks through each one, clicking, scrolling and then closing each report. Towards the end I notice names which shock me. Louise Partridge, age fifteen. The girl in the photograph is wiry, wide eyed and looks like she has an attitude problem. I immediately recognise her as a much younger Lou, the girl that was in the Duke’s study last night.

  Jeremy O’Donnelly, age sixteen. The file is eight years old but there’s no mistaking Jer’s young face, ready to take on the world with one look. I don’t want to see any more, to know any more about their history, but I can’t tear my eyes away.

  The last report makes my heart stop. Name of subject: Ella Chisholm, age eleven. The report comes on full-screen and I can see everything that was done to her. Method: zero power. Subject capable of self-contained energy. Drugs administered: Peyote, benzodiazepine, barbiturates. Effect: None. Subject still capable of power.

  I can only imagine that the report was written before Ella broke out of the facility but it makes my eyes sting to read that they did those things to her. She was eleven years old, taken against her will and drugged. I feel like I’m going to be sick and I have to look away.

  "I think I’ve seen enough," I say to Matthew and make to leave.

  "Wait! Just a few more minutes of your time, please," he says and gestures back to the chair. Although I want nothing more than to get out of there and get some oxygen into my lungs, I do as he asks and sit back down.

  "This is some barbaric stuff, that’s for sure. You know, being a reporter, you have to have a certain willingness to confront the evil that men can do," he says, picking up a pen from his desk and examining it absentmindedly.

  "Rather you than me," I say, rubbing my eyes. I feel mentally exhausted.

  "Although I’ll have to do a bit more digging, I would imagine that if Carlton Munday has signed even one of these reports he can be implicated in an investigation and removed from post," he says, almost talking to himself. That gives me a surge of hope at least.

  "That would be amazing. I think it would save a lot of people in the long run," I say, relieved to be speaking to someone who may actually be able to do something more effective than myself. "If it’s alright with you, I’ll leave you to it," I say, getting up to leave again.

  "Sure, sure," he says, staring at his screen once more. "Oh, but hang on. How can I reach you if I have any questions or need to get more info from you?"

  I deliberate about whether or not to tell him my name and just hand over my phone number. Could there be any harm in it?

  "Curtis," I eventually say and grab the pen from him to write my number down. "But I don’t want anyone else getting that number," I warn. He nods and gives me a warm smile, his perfect white teeth showing.

  "Of course, Curtis. Thanks for bringing this to me," he stands and gives my hand a final shake, and I see myself out.

  Mission accomplished, as far as I’m concerned. I look forward to letting things run their course and hopefully just spending a few days with Ella alone at home.

  I step out of the lift to find the reception empty, which seems odd but could just mean that the receptionist has gone to the bathroom. I sign out of the visitors log and step through the revolving door onto the street outside. The sky is blue, and I breathe in the cold December air in great deep breaths. My hands instinctively go to my pockets as I scan the cafe windows for a sign of Ella, but the winter sun is bright and reflecting off the glass, making it difficult for me to see anything inside.

  I look up and down the street and notice a black car in the middle of the road. I dismiss it at first, but it revs its engine as I cross the road and I speed up instinctively. It stops a few feet from me and a tall man steps out of the passenger side. Am I getting paranoid in my old age, or is he walking towards me?

  I look to the cafe again, but Ella is nowhere to be seen. Has someone taken her? I go right up the the window and peer in, shielding my eyes from the reflection by cupping my hands around my face, but as I do a hand clamps down on my shoulder.

  "What the—" I spin around and find the tallish man with sunglasses on standing behind me. I find it odd that he’d be wearing them in the middle of December, but I don’t get a chance to make any enquiries because before any formal introduction, he pulls his arm back and hits me. I don’t see the fist coming, so when it hits me on the jaw it sends me flying to the ground. I never was much of a fighter, so it takes me a moment to get my bearings as I scramble up. I push myself back on my feet and scan my surroundings for some kind of escape route, but I’m at a complete dead end. He comes towards me again, and the second blow is aimed at my stomach, which winds me and sends me back to the concrete, desperately trying to get some air into my lungs. He doesn’t let up, but instead grabs my arm and drags me to one of the black cars, opening the back door and throwing me into the back. I kick out just as I lay on the back seat, hoping that he’ll be thrown off by my sudden act of retaliation. My foot catches him on the shoulder, but rather than be knocked off his feet as I’d hoped, it seems to just annoy him. He slams the door on my leg and I scream out in pain, but it’s enough to stop me fighting back for now. Stuffing me into the car completely, he closes the back door. He climbs into the passenger seat at the front and I notice a man at the wheel I hadn’t spotted before.

  In total agony from head to toe I attempt to sit up and at least try to catch sight of Ella out the window as the car begins to pull away. I instantly regret it as the sudden movement causes my head to feel like it’s going to explode.

  I get what I think is a glimpse of her coming out of the cafe, a look of confusion across her face, and I bang on the window trying to get her attention. Maybe she saw me being beaten up? I can only hope, because it doesn’t take me long to realise that the windows must be blacked out and she can’t see into the car at all. If she heard me she doesn’t show it, because she seems to be looking up and down the street frowning, her blonde hair whipping round as she turns her head this way and that. I bang louder, but the car pulls round the corner and within seconds she�
�s lost to sight and we’re threading our way through the traffic on Kensington High Street. I grab the door release, but of course it does nothing, the locks evidently managed by the driver.

  "Knock it off or I’ll stick you in the boot," Sunglasses, as I’ve decided to call him, says to me gruffly. He removes something from his fingers and pockets it. Knuckle dusters, I realise. No wonder it all hurt so much. I lean back on the cool black leather, my stomach feeling tender from where he punched me and my jaw feeling worse. I don’t even want to think about my leg right now, which I can picture is probably going purple under my jeans. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s broken, but I daren’t move it now.

  "Who are you?" I ask, wincing with the pain that speaking causes me. I touch my cheek furtively and find that the corner of my mouth is split and bleeding.

  "Shut up," he says, and doesn’t bother to make any further comment. Realising that saying anything else will probably only make him more angry, I shove my hands deep into my pockets and stare out the window, trying to get a sense for where we’re going. I recognise one or two landmarks at first: the Royal Albert Hall, Marble Arch, Hyde Park. But then we’re in parts of town that I’ve never been before, and I soon become confused. Are we going North? We haven’t crossed the River Thames from what I can tell, and neither of the other occupants seem to want to give me a guided tour. I try and memorise anything and everything that looks like it would help to find my way back home, but then I realise that would imply that I’m going to escape these people, whoever they are.

  With my hands back in my jacket pocket, my fingers curl back around the Duke’s switchblade and a surge of hope runs into my chest. I could flick it open and stab sunglasses in the neck and then the driver in the eye, one-two, like they do it in the movies. But who am I kidding? I’ve never used a knife for anything more than cutting sandwiches and the likelihood of my success is minimal. I feel like a coward and an idiot, childish for thinking that I could defend myself and foolish for getting captured, even though I have no idea yet even why. Some sensible part of me is trying to reason with the irrational and tell me that I should hide the knife and use it when I’m not in a locked car with no actual escape route.

  Twenty minutes, forty, and then what feels like over an hour passes us by. I think about Ella and what she will have made of my sudden disappearance. I don’t even know if she saw me leaving the building before I was caught so she might still be wandering up and down the street waiting for me to come out. My heart sinks at the thought of her waiting there for me for hours. She’s smart, I tell myself. Smarter than me, that’s for sure. She wouldn’t have walked right into some kind of weird trap and gotten captured, and even if she did she would have been able to magic her way out of it. I did nothing more than act as an effective punching bag.

  We seem to be driving through the docks somewhere, although along the River Thames that could mean we are in one of many places. There are low concrete warehouses, cranes, areas that are surrounded by scaffolding and large lorries everywhere.

  "Put this on," Sunglasses says to me, throwing a black piece of cloth over his shoulder. It’s some kind of linen bag and I realise he means for me to put it over my head, I’m guessing so that I don’t see exactly which building we’re in.

  "Is this really necessary?" I ask, stupidly.

  "Put it on or I’ll knock you out and drag you in," he threatens, although he says it in boredom as if he’s said a similar thing many times before.

  "Blimey, alright. Keep your hair on," I say, imitating a sense of humour that I currently don’t have. I pull the bag over my head, trying not to touch my tender face as I do so, and leave myself in darkness. Wherever we were headed, it seems that we’ve finally arrived.

  CHAPTER 12

  My head stuffed inside the sack leaves me with nothing but a few pinpricks of light through the cloth. It smells like sweat and bad breath and I try to breathe through my mouth, although it doesn’t really help.

  The car slows, and I can hear a low hum coming from outside, which I figure is the sound of an electric door opening, like the kind you get in garages. The car inches forward and eventually comes to a complete stop, but no one gets out until the electric doors are fully closed and there’s nothing but silence.

  I hear both Sunglasses and the driver open their doors at the same time, and then the door on my left opens shortly afterward.

  "Out," he says, and I picture him holding the door open for me. I shuffle along but as soon as I put weight on my bad leg I cry out and fall on the floor. He tuts and pulls me up but I realise I can’t walk on it at all without feeling like I want to throw up. Not a good sign. Sunglasses is evidently not the compassionate type as he swears and curses at me, throwing my arm around his shoulder and dragging me to wherever we’re going whilst I try to hop on one leg. Every bounce makes me wince and I can feel my hands shaking, a feeling I vaguely remember having when I tore a ligament back in secondary school during a football game. I insisted to my Mum at the time that my leg was broken, but after a trip to A&E, an X-Ray and a visit to an unsympathetic doctor’s office, it turned out that it was just muscle damage and that I would need to "stop whining and man up," as my Dad said at the time. This feels the same, but worse, and I wonder if it’s at all possible to ‘man up’ when being kidnapped and beaten up by total strangers.

  I hear doors open and close and we climb into what must be a lift, because I hear the impatient push of a button and the familiar feeling of being pulled against gravity as it descends. The whole thing seems to be taking an age thanks to my slightly invalid state and Sunglasses only grumbles and scoffs at my slow progress. I wonder to myself if he’s still wearing shades indoors, but then worry that maybe I have concussion because thinking thoughts like that in a near-death situation are not at all logical or sane.

  Eventually I’m dumped in a chair, cold and hard, like the uncomfortable type you get in classrooms. My hands are tied behind my back but at least my leg has been left alone; they probably realise that I’m not about to go running anywhere in a hurry. There’s a shuffle as Sunglasses leaves and slams the door behind him. The air is damp and cold and ever-so-slightly salty, which makes me realise we must be close to the sea somehow. I guess at some point the estuaries of the Thames do meet the ocean, so it’s possible we’ve driven all the way across London to one of those ports.

  "Mr. Clarence, it is an honour," says a cool voice, female and vaguely familiar. I laugh, and the sound is alien to my own ears: slightly manic, like a man from a lunatic asylum.

  "You think I’m Edward Clarence? Give me a break," I choke as the pain in my jaw throbs through my head. With the hood over my head, she probably can’t see, but I’m way darker than he could be even if he’d gone on holiday to a hot country for a month.

  "Well, if you’re not Edward Clarence, as you supposedly said you were only a few hours ago, then who exactly are you?" says the woman not missing a beat.

  "I’m nobody. Nothing of interest to you, so can you do me a favour and get me to a hospital?" I croak.

  "Oh, nobody. I see, I see," she says as if thinking to herself. I’m wracking my brains to figure out where I know the voice from but what I’m sure to be slight concussion is now clouding my thoughts. "That’s a shame, because I thought you might possibly be able to tell us about Curtis Mayes." The sound of my own name on her lips gives me the creeps. It sounds unnatural, like it doesn’t belong here, in this place.

  "Never heard of him," I lie.

  "Really? Oh, that’s a shame. Because we have his girlfriend and would very much like to ask him a few questions about her." I freeze. They have Ella? But how? Think, Curtis! She’s trying to play me, I’m sure of it. She can’t have Ella —I saw her on the street with my own eyes. She knew I wasn’t Edward Clarence too. How could she? So, she knows I’m Curtis Mayes, but wants me to say it, so that she has a reason to keep me detained maybe.

  "I demand a lawyer and my phone call," I say lamely.

  "Oh dear, C
urtis. You’ve been watching too many movies. There will be no lawyers and no phone calls, oh no. Did you not hear that the Acting Prime Minister passed an emergency law as his first act on post that anyone associated with Augur terrorism can be detained and questioned at the discretion of the government agencies in charge of civil defence?" She’s trying to sound cute, with her soft sing-song voice and clipped British accent. Not a trace of common in her, like Edward Clarence, I think to myself. But the sound is getting on my nerves. If I had Augur powers I’d be ripping the place apart right now with her in it. A small part of me realises that it’s the first time since being with Ella that I’ve actually imagined myself with powers and wonder why.

  "I’m not associated with Augur terrorism," I say.

  "Nice try, but I have footage of you entering a known cyber criminal’s house, a newspaper’s offices where you claimed to be a known member of the Magic Circle, as well as entering the Duke’s London home on no less than two occasions. If you were Edward Clarence that wouldn’t seem so odd, but as you claim you’re not him I can only assume that you’re up to something. As it happens, that’s enough for me to detain you for up to ninety days without any further evidence. It’s true what they say: you can’t even pick your nose in London without CCTV catching it," she says in a failed attempt at humour. I don’t laugh and I’m dying to take this claustrophobic sack off my head.

  "If you want to talk to me you can at least remove the hood," I say feigning cooperation.

  "Promise you won’t bite?" she jokes as there’s a rough tug from behind me and the hood comes off. I blink in the bright light but there’s nothing really to see. I’m sitting in a pool of phosphorescent light that comes from a lamp overhead, and the rest of the room is pitch black. I’m unable to snap my head back in time to see her behind me before she retreats into the darkness at the edge of my vision.