by J Jordan
“Oh, right. Romney Archibald Balvance. I don’t know the day.”
“Okay,” said Cora, “that’s fine. No serious brain damage. Do you know where you are? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“We’re at the top of a mountain and it’s supposed to be cold up here, but it’s not. That’s a three.”
“Okay, it’s actually very cold up here, but that’s not important,” said Cora. “That has to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. That lightning bolt was gunning for you. Did you anger any gods in there?”
“Yeah,” said Romney, “there was this one lady made out of fire and she had a nice office. But I hugged her and sucked her into this stone here. Katrese told me to. And Andrea was there and . . . ”
He trailed off. No one in the group was paying attention to the story, which was fine by him. Victoria and Tykeso kept their distance. Cora remained polite.
“Okay,” she said, “just to be on the safe side, we’re going to take you to the hospital now. I won’t lie to you. There’s a very high chance that you have a brain injury. Wait, is that another Katarin stone? Where did you find that? And where did you get those rings? Where were you?”
Romney looked down at the golden loops around his fingers. The Katarin stone flashed blue from its place on his chest.
“I don’t know what any of them do, but I did figure out the stone. Katrese told me it absorbs magic, but what she didn’t tell me right away is that you gotta let it out after you’re done. That’s why I exploded.”
“The stone made you explode,” Cora repeated, for her own benefit, “because Katrese told you to absorb a fire person.”
She seemed to parse the information, which was nice. A lot had happened down in the depths of Hirna Andrea, and he didn’t want to fight her on every single point. Cora took Romney by the hand and led him down the path.
“You’ve suffered a lot of trauma today, but I think some rest and an MRI will do you a lot of good.”
“The fire lady was real. Her name was the Matron.”
“Of course she was,” Cora murmured. “Just like those lightning bolts that struck you multiple times in the same place.”
“No one wants to talk about how he appeared out of thin air? Even after the massive blue explosion?”
“I have never seen that happen,” said Victoria. “Sister Marina used to do some weird tricks to show off, but I have never seen anything like that before.”
Cora nodded to them with a thin smile on her face.
“Romney needs our help. So maybe we should focus on that right now.”
They remained on the subject of magic, which made for a difficult path back down to the Water Mirror. Cora stood her ground on the matter of electrostatic discharge, that lightning could strike a given area more than once. Tykeso pointed out that the odds of lightning striking the same place twice were incredibly low, and that the odds of a single, sustained bolt were entirely impossible. If this were true, he added, they all would have been shocked into piles of ash. Cora asked her companion for a better explanation, one based in logical reasoning, and then rejected his hypothesis that magic was real and that Romney had become the focal point for a sudden discharge of the mystical power.
He relayed what the Goddess of Creation had explained in the magical holding chamber. This did little to support Tykeso’s point. Victoria elected to remain the only neutral party by staying out of the discussion entirely. She took up the rear of their formation, where she was preoccupied with an internal argument of her own.
This left no one available to pay attention to their surroundings.
Tykeso had prepared another advance on Cora’s argument, but it was cut short by a rifle butt to the side of the head. Cora’s defense was lost when an arm wrapped around her throat. Victoria looked up from her reverie to see two more soldiers approaching, rifles pointed at her. She raised her hands in the air, which left her open for a kick to the back. Romney looked around at the sudden change, pondered which of his new rings might help in the situation, then watched a sucker punch move in for his jaw. The darkness hit him before the ground.
Romney was dropped again at some point in his unconscious travel, because he awoke on a different kind of ground. The dirt he lay in wasn’t hard with the stones of a magical mountain. This was soft, dry dirt with earthier tones. He rolled onto his back and observed the clear-blue sky above, complete with scorching midday sun. Somehow, he had lost whatever pleasantness had made it all so pretty. Now it was hot and dry. And his head hurt.
Romney squinted, which did nothing for the conga line of pain dancing between his neck and the back of his skull. Someone was talking, and he could hear the words clearly, but he wasn’t ready to parse language at that particular moment. He looked to his right and observed Lorna in full-body restraints. A squad of soldiers was escorting her to the back of a heavily armored vehicle. As she passed by, she caught his glance. Lorna winked. This made Romney’s blood run cold.
Lorna Reymus would never see the inside of a prison. She wouldn’t make it to the front door. Her escorts would disappear, along with their vehicle, and any chances of her doing hard time for her war crimes. It would likely happen within the blink of an eye and leave behind a trail of greasy innards. These mental images set his other senses back into gear.
He sat up to find a shadow cast on his legs. The source was standing above him, hands on hips, the badge around her neck gleaming in the sunlight. She was athletic, the muscles in her arms flexed like steel cables. Her strong jaw was set in a grimace. These were troubling details, but they weren’t the worst parts. She wore a ballistic vest with the letters “OIB” emblazoned across the chest in block letters and a hat with the same acronym, in case there was any room for error.
But the one thing Romney would never forget, her eyes. Green like the dark spots on camouflage. Her stare carried unfiltered malice, the kind reserved for mortal enemies. When she finally spoke, her voice was a low growl.
“End of the line, Balvance.”
Romney tried placing the woman standing before him. Where did she know him from? He was halfway through college when his memory started throwing out random answers, that he knew were entirely wrong. He went to scratch his head and found his hands cuffed together. He settled on scratching his eyebrow instead.
“Do I know you from somewhere?”
This did terrible things to her mood.
“Enjoy that sunshine. Because it’s going to be a long time before you see it again. You’re getting the smallest prison cell in North Ontar.”
“Right after you answer some questions back at HQ,” added the tall man approaching from behind.
“Who are you?”
The tall man chuckled. His face carried a warmth and wisdom to it. This feature stood in stark contrast to his glowering partner. He answered for her. She was obviously too angry to answer.
“I’m Agent Salinger, and this is Agent Kinsey. And before we find you a prison cell, we’re going to need some answers.”
“And don’t worry about your jewelry,” said Kinsey. “We’ll return it to the right people, once you tell us where it belongs. And you will tell us.”
Romney was still having a difficult time with this situation. The OIB? Why were they involved in this?
“I got it from the temple. The goddess gave them to me.”
“No, no, no,” said Agent Salinger. “No answers here, please. The rules were specific on that point. No international interrogations, of any kind. Unless someone’s life is in immediate danger.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” said Agent Kinsey, the comment directed to Romney with laser guidance.
Romney chuckled at this, which earned him a kick to the gut. Everyone told him it was dangerous and yet he kept playing, even when he didn’t want to anymore. He saw no way to stop playing. Maybe it was Katrese’s way of saying, Stop doing that.
Another thought occurred to Romney. He wasn’t sure how he had made the connection, but now it seared through his b
rain like a brand, mixing in with his growing migraine. This Agent Kinsey was kicking him while he was down. She was picking on him. This grown woman. What gave her the right? Oh sure, being a special agent for the OIB somehow gave her the power to kick people while they were down. The nerve of it! The bloody nerve!
“No unwarranted bodily harm,” added Agent Salinger. “They were specific on that point too.”
“He was belligerent. Stop resisting.”
Romney looked up at the glowering agent. It had been an eventful day for him, to say the least. And now he was coming to terms with the fact that the Ontaran Intelligence Bureau had sicked its biggest bully on him. Out of the frying pan and into the sun. The single most powerful intelligence agency in the world had its myriad eyes on Romney Balvance. The thought was terrifying. But somehow, it infuriated Romney. Just like Devon Reymus and Mila Rin, this Agent Kinsey had immediate power over him. This Agent Kinsey, this bully, had finally pushed Romney Balvance’s last button.
Romney’s grin was wide.
“Lady, I’ve only just started playing.”
Several things happened in the background. Transfers were signed, agreements exchanged, dossiers turned over, clearance badges photocopied, stapled, thrown away. Four suspects were taken to an unmarked jet. It lifted off from a small airstrip in a nondescript location, carrying the four passengers secured to a bench behind a reinforced steel cage. The two provincial agents were seated in more comfortable chairs. The main difference was theirs could recline.
Agent Kinsey had taken one at the rear of the plane, which she swiveled around to face the cage. When she wasn’t looking up something on her laptop, she was staring at the captives. Cora thought she was the only one who noticed this, until she noticed Romney was staring back.
“I know you’re not in a good place right now,” she said under her breath, “but goading a provincial agent, like what you’re doing now, is a fantastic way to make this situation worse. We are all in the same bad spot. So when you make them mad, you make it worse for everybody.”
“Don’t worry,” said Romney. “These guys are small time.”
The group made a collective groan as Agent Kinsey stood and moved with purpose toward their cage. Her eyes stayed on Romney.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me,” said Romney. “You see, Cora, most people think the OIB is a ring of spies. They’re supposed to run around in fancy dinner clothes and pull guns on people. And maybe one or two do that sort of thing, every once in a while. But your average run-of-the-mill OIB agent is a desk jockey. You know what they do all day?”
Cora’s eyes were two dinner saucers. She wanted to glare at him for being such a tremendous idiot. Instead, she spent the energy shooting furtive glances at the agent on the other side of the cage. Agent Kinsey’s face had become a mask of rage.
“Come on, guess.”
“I don’t think so,” said Cora, half chuckling, half crying. “I don’t feel comfortable discussing this in front of our present company. I, for one, appreciate everything you do for our country.”
She turned to Agent Kinsey, on the verge of tears.
“I will do my very best to work with you on this investigation. I have nothing to do with this man. I am an upstanding citizen with no prior convictions. As an adult.”
“Your average OIB agent reads emails,” Romney continued. “They browse the internet and sort through pictures of people. Databases, databases, databases. They renew their firearms training twice a year, and that’s pretty much the only time they use their guns. You know, Cora, you could be a great OIB agent. All you need is a gun. You don’t have to be good with it.”
“Please don’t drag me into this.”
“Our friend suffered many forms of trauma over the past few days,” Tykeso interjected. “Blunt force trauma, emotional trauma, plane crash trauma, electrostatic trauma. And he hasn’t received any medical attention. So I wouldn’t put any value to what he says.”
“We have paramedics on standby at the airport,” said Agent Salinger, appearing by Agent Kinsey’s side. “I think a professional opinion will clear that up.”
“Ah, now there’s a hero. Do you know how many lives are saved each day by your average Lanvale paramedic? It’s in the high twenties. Every day, every night, gathering the wounded and ill, patching them up, and sending them back out into the world. All of that for a below-average salary. Believe me, I’ve done their taxes before. Really sad stuff. Makes you wonder how many lives an OIB agent saves in a given day. Is it even worth the money?”
This was the last straw. Agent Kinsey had thrown open the lock and had nearly made it inside the cage, when Agent Salinger thrust himself into the doorway, blocking the entrance. She reached over his shoulder, her eyes filled with dark-green murder, a look of ire reserved for an archnemesis. Her only comeback was a frustrated roar and a few ugly swipes at Romney that were too far away to do anything. This outburst caused the copilot to poke his head into the cabin.
“Everything okay?”
Agent Salinger dug his heels into the carpet and shoved Agent Kinsey away from the cage.
“I need an extra hand to close this cage, if you’re not busy.”
The copilot paused, where he contemplated being within reach of the irate Agent Kinsey. He was just a pilot, who wanted to live to retirement.
“We’re over Cresdale right now. Touch down at Lanvale International in ten.”
The pilot’s door closed. Salinger did his best to kick the cage closed behind him. Then he wrangled Agent Kinsey back into her seat.
“We’ll be landing soon. Would you like a water or something to cool off?”
“I would like one,” said Victoria, who flinched when Agent Kinsey rose from her seat. Luckily, Agent Salinger was ready to catch her.
“No, no, I’ll get the cage. You just sit back and relax before we land. We’ve all got a long night ahead of us.”
And with that, Agent Salinger moved to the gate, clicked it shut, and slid the deadbolt into place.
“She asked for a water,” said Romney.
“Apologies. Won’t fit through the bars, I’m afraid. No more outbursts, please. It will only make the next few days all the more difficult.”
Agent Salinger returned to his seat, picked up a nearby newspaper, and began to read. Agent Kinsey ripped open her laptop and began an onslaught on the keys.
It was the longest ten minutes of Cora Queldin’s life. It was really twelve and felt like one hundred.
The plane landed in Lanvale International at 7:38 p.m. local time, where it unloaded its passengers directly onto the tarmac. Paramedics observed no life-threatening injuries, signed off on their condition, and dispensed waters to the four prisoners before leaving them to their fates. As the ambulance left the scene, an SUV swooped in like a large, black bear. The burly vehicle scooped them up and carried them out of the airport.
They moved onto the freeway, then off the ramp leading into downtown Lanvale, then down a dark alleyway a quarter mile in, down farther into a hidden parking garage, and finally to a stop before a pair of steel doors.
The four prisoners were ushered out of the vehicle and escorted into a sterile hallway. Each prisoner was put in a small holding room with a two-way mirror, a stainless-steel table, and cold steel chairs. Romney’s chair had an uneven leg. He turned to make a comment on the chair’s condition when the door closed. Now was not the time to complain, Romney thought to himself. It was time to make the best of the situation. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of being nervous. So, he spent an undetermined amount of time rocking back and forth on it. Nothing else happened for a terribly long time.
That was a problem with the world, he thought. People were allowed to step on each other for no good reason. Sure, he reasoned, he may have been involved in major criminal activities—robbing a bank, for starters. In fact, maybe there were a few more things to consider: attacking the bank tellers with pepper powder, throwing one into a large
piece of furniture, stealing other people’s money. But did that give anyone the right to kick a man while he was down?
Of course, they knew exactly what he had done. He was being held in a secret location by a government agency. They knew where he lived, where his parents lived, where Haley lived, what everyone he ever knew was doing at that particular time, and what they might be having for dinner. They knew what he stole and when. They likely knew exactly what he was going to say to defend himself. As much as he hated to admit it, Agent Kinsey was right. He would never see the sun again.
And there would be no way for Mila Rin to bail them out of this one. If she wanted to. This was probably Mila’s work to begin with. She had likely swept away any trail that led back to Reymus Industries. And that was that. Devon Reymus would never see the inside of a room like this one, Romney conceded, because that was how the world worked. This was a very bad situation indeed. But, for some strange reason, these facts didn’t bother Romney as much as the kick. How could a human being treat another human being like that? He continued rocking back and forth in his chair, each silent moment feeding the fire in his stomach.
Romney had just devised a beat from the uneven chair when the door opened again. Agent Kinsey crossed over to the table, took her seat across from Romney, and placed a folder in front of her. The folder contained a mess of photographs and important-looking sheets, which she sorted through in frustrated silence. When the folder was finally in order, she lifted a photograph out of the pile and slid it in front of Romney. It was a picture of three masked robbers fleeing a bank lobby. He looked at it, unimpressed. She had pulled footage from a camera. Whoop-de-do.
“From the beginning. First Ontaran National Bank. Thirteen thousand five hundred and twenty, Ontaran. A small-time heist on an unknown bank. Perfect training for the big time.”
She pulled another photo and placed it on top of the first. This one captured a bearded elf holding something in a towel. A man was reeling from its awesomeness, whatever it was. His two companions were looking at each other.