by Jenn Stark
You sure about that? Because I wasn’t so much anymore. I had seen what sorcerers could do, and the kind of blameless devastation caused by natural disasters seemed like something right up their alley.
Before Armaeus could respond, an enormous burst of wind that sounded like a freight train lifted us bodily and threw us once more into the side of the building, as if the storm itself dared us to counter its fury. He grabbed me, and together we fled, easily breaking down one of the locked doors and entering what could only be a dining hall. The glass had been paneled over, but once again not reinforced. As the wind started inexorably battering the building, I turned to Armaeus.
“We have to do something,” I implored in my outside voice. “This is crazy.”
Armaeus glanced at me, then sighed. “Very well, Miss Wilde. We’re here. We can’t stop the storm from coming, but we are here. We can help keep these people safe.” He shook his head ruefully. “I begin to see the problem that may have driven me to my past comments about the danger you present to me. I find it nearly impossible to deny you anything.”
I blinked, but he kept going. “So be it. When the wind stops, we move.”
The storm crashed and raged on, but we hunkered down, waiting for a break in the action. We had no access to the outside, but Armaeus cast a dome of protection over the resort—invisible to the outside, but shunting the rain and wind away from the central buildings. The area surrounding the resort didn’t fare as well, however. By the time the wind stopped roaring, the resort was an isolated hamlet of survival in the midst of total devastation.
It didn’t stay isolated for long. No sooner had the storm left than lights appeared on the horizon, coming from both sea and land. The resort hadn’t been built to handle this level of typhoon, and floodwaters spilled out from the surrounding areas, rushing over the manicured lawns. That, combined with the saltwater of the rising ocean’s storm surge and the runoff from the local construction sites, all too quickly turned the resort into a sunken city. I had no doubt that the structures would stand, with the benefit of Armaeus’s magic, but the short-term devastation was very real and highly dangerous.
We remained hidden as long as we could, then raced across the covered walkways and down to the fitness center, reaching the building almost at the same time that the rescuers did. In a blink of the Magician’s magic, we no longer stood out, but resembled the slender, fine-boned Bali Aga villagers, nearly all of whom were huddled together in a multipurpose aerobics room, their fear palpable.
In a flash, I confirmed what Simon had shared with us. These people didn’t have a leader. They were possessed of a remarkable level of Connected ability, but there was no one person that stood out among them. How had they been abandoned by their own leaders? What had happened here before the storm had hit?
I didn’t have a chance to ask the question before the doors opened and lights swept the space. The villagers stood, and I stood right along with them. The Magician had left my side.
A man strode forward, flanked by a Balinese official, and I recognized him immediately as the Nobel-Prize-winning scientist, Rindon. Tall, slender, and aristocratic, he was paler than I expected, with dark eyes and dark hair. As he spoke, his man translated.
“My name is Dr. Sebastian Rindon,” he announced, his voice rich, cultured, and surprisingly warm. To my sodden senses, bombarded for hours by the harrowing storm, it sounded like he truly cared. He also spoke the native language, so points to him. “You’re safe, but due to the storm you’ve survived, you’re already being exposed to a terrible sickness.”
Instantly, fear gripped the group around me. These were people who were not used to mixing with outsiders. No doubt, disease and sickness were among their greatest worries in general, aside from something as devastating as a natural disaster.
“You have two options,” Rindon continued. “One is to remain here until we can make sure that the outer area is safe for you to pass through. The other is for us to protect you with a vaccination against the diseases we know are in the water. This water isn’t the ocean and lake water you are used to. It has been poisoned. It will soak into your skin, get in your mouth, eyes, ears. Even if you don’t drink it, it can hurt you. A splash, a misplaced foot, steam or mist rising off the surface. It is everywhere. If you get exposed at all to the water, and you are at risk of sickness and death.”
It was all I could do not to gape. It sounded so simple, so direct, and so obvious. All these people needed was a simple vaccination to avoid all that pain…yet how easy would it be to slip something into a vial? Was this what Rhonda’s cousin, Janet, had experienced in her own disaster halfway around the world? Had she been presented with this same incontrovertible, obvious path to lead people to safety?
“Where are Ida Ayu Ni Luh and Ida Bagus Oda?” a woman in the crowd shouted. “We will not move without them.”
Dr. Rindon listened carefully as his translator relayed the question. His brows shot up in alarm, and he turned quickly to dispatch two of his lab-coated assistants. Because he realized that he hadn’t caught what he was after? Or because he genuinely cared about the loss of human life?
“We will search for them, I promise you. In the meantime, we need to get you out of here, or you need to agree to be quarantined on the upper level of the building. I warn you there will be no water or electricity in this location, but neither do we wish to force you to be vaccinated against your will. It is your right to decide, always.”
That threw the group into renewed chaos, anger beginning to crest. The Bali Aga were afraid, and they had every right to be, Rindon explained, but the vaccinations he offered were safe. They had been used throughout the world and had legitimately resulted in far fewer illnesses for people walking through sewage-infested waters, filled with toxic runoff. Children, the elderly, pregnant mothers—no one had lost their lives. But it was their choice. Always their choice.
I flicked open my third eye and focused on Rindon, but I couldn’t seem to get a read on him that way either. He didn’t seem to possess even a spark of Connected ability. Surely that couldn’t be right, though. As a medical professional at his level—he should have some Connected energy…shouldn’t he?
A Balinese police agent appeared at the other doorway, and Rindon moved over to him. The doctor’s face was drawn and tight when he turned back to the huddled Bali Aga.
“Ida Ayu Ni Luh and Ida Bagus Oda are dead,” he announced gravely. This time, there were no shouts or cries. Only shock. “Caught beneath wreckage outside. It’s likely their bodies were expected to be washed away in the storm.”
I frowned, then stepped forward. As I appeared to be one of the villagers, no one objected when I raised my voice. “Why do you think that’s likely?” I asked in the local dialect.
Dr. Rindon grimaced, appearing to be truly pained by the question. “They were shot, I’m sorry to tell you. Their bodies were left behind on purpose.”
Once again, pandemonium ruled. This information proved to be too much for the small, isolated group whose worst fears were becoming painfully real. I reached out for Armaeus under all the noise.
Shot? I demanded with my inside voice. Seriously?
“Shot,” he confirmed. “I’m viewing the bodies now. It was murder. Conducted well in advance of Rindon’s arrival, I might add.”
I grimaced. Well, what are we going to do here? We have to get these people out. We can’t let them stay here, especially if someone is willing to use guns to solve their problems.
“Agreed, Miss Wilde. I follow your lead.”
Oh, great. Get here, I thought to him, an idea forming in my mind. A second later, Armaeus straightened in the crowd of crying people, moving toward me.
“I am a healer,” I announced boldly, stepping out from the Bali Aga to address Rindon. “We will do what you ask, but we will administer the vaccines ourselves. I will do it.”
“I volunteer as well,” Armaeus said, stepping up beside me.
Rindon regarded us with s
hrewd, narrowing eyes. I expected him to resist, but instead, he smiled broadly. “Absolutely,” he declared. “Thank you, thank you. It is the best way. Time is of the essence. Come forward. You’ll be vaccinated first.”
I couldn’t deny the surge of fear—which was ridiculous, but I’d only been Justice of the Arcana Council a short while. I could be excused for not wanting to trust my great and mighty powers against Rindon’s potentially toxic buzzkill drug. Nevertheless, I deftly pulled the syringe out of the tech’s hand when he approached, holding it up as if to inspect it. I closed my right hand around it, focusing all the energy of the Nul Magis shard in my right hand through the liquid within the vial.
Then I let the man stick me with the damn thing.
Armaeus didn’t bother with the extra theatrics, but then, he’d been doing this far longer.
The liquid slid into my body without apparent effect, and I nodded curtly, turning back to the Bali Aga. “It is safe,” I said. They stared at me with blank fear in their eyes, but they didn’t gainsay me. With the Magician’s powerful illusion magic at work, I was not only one of their own, I was a long-standing, trusted member of their village. As long as his spell held, they would do what I asked.
We moved ahead, and an assembly line was quickly established. Because Rindon’s team had the syringes already set up in cases, they quickly stripped out the needles and handed them to us as wide-eyed villagers stepped forward, some holding children, some assisting the elderly. Each time I handled a syringe I infused it with a narrow zap of energy, watching with satisfaction as the Nul Magis crackled through the liquid.
There was something in those vials. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I managed to pocket a few of them as I processed the villagers, the Magician on my other side, both of us under the careful scrutiny of Rindon’s team. Interestingly, Rindon himself didn’t take part in the inoculation process, but stood off to the side, barking orders into a satellite phone about other survivors.
To all appearances, he was exactly as advertised—the great South American savior, a scientist dedicated to saving the flooded masses. Were his vials full of null-tech drugs? I still didn’t know. This man could simply be a zealot wanting to save as many lives as he could. It would take more study, but at least these people would be safe.
It took hours to get not only the people of the fitness center processed but also those in the outlying structures—and not all the survivors were processed by the Magician and me. I watched with dismay as Balinese and tourists alike were settled onto boats or ushered through the lower-level water, knowing that some of them might have received doses of whatever Rindon had put in his syringes. But there was nothing I could do about that. Not yet.
Suddenly, the man himself was in front of me.
“Thank you, Ida Ayu Tjokorda,” he said warmly. I didn’t react to the name—someone must have given it to him. “As a healer, I appreciate your efforts on behalf of your people. I assure you, without these vaccinations, many of them would have fallen sick. You have helped them all.”
He held out his hand, and I lifted mine automatically, now stripped of the plastic gloves his team had given me. His dark eyes flared as our hands connected. If I wasn’t who I was, I don’t know that I would have noticed the residue on his palm as it pressed against mine. The shard of Nul Magis in my palm zinged again to life, however, and the brief bit of magic was instantly negated—but not before I felt the surge of mood enhancer bubbling up through me. What the hell was this? More of the vaccination masked by a recreational drug…or something else entirely?
Either way, you shouldn’t go around doping up your friends and supporters. There were better ways to get them to like you.
“It was my absolute pleasure to meet you,” I said in the language of the Bali Aga. “I look forward to meeting you again soon.”
Rindon’s grin only widened as the man beside him translated.
“I look forward to that day too,” he said.
19
“Oh! Oh my, Justice Wilde. I didn’t expect to see you here quite this early. Please tell me you haven’t spent the entire night back here in the stacks. It’s not good for you, it surely isn’t.”
The flurry of thickly accented British concern floated over me like the beginning sequence of an alarm clock, doing its job of alerting me well before it resonated at a level of being truly annoying. This time, though, I hadn’t fallen asleep. I’d merely been resting my eyes.
I better not have fallen asleep, anyway. That would be concerning. It seemed every time I hit this place, narcolepsy wasn’t far behind.
Putting those thoughts out of my mind, I rolled to my feet as the compact, impeccably dressed form of Mrs. French, the librarian’s caretaker, bustled up to me. Her lips were pursed in her round face, her white hair swept up into a no-nonsense bun, and her eyes were unmistakably worried beneath her pinched-together brows. She was a short woman, a bit under five feet tall, but she was no pushover. She had enough starch in the voluminous skirts of her proper Victorian-era dove-gray gown to hold her own against nearly anyone in the Council, including me.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, waving off her concern. “I just wanted to see if there had been anything that had come across in the last few weeks or months regarding this Rindon character. But there’s nothing. As far as the Connected community is concerned, the guy is every bit what he appears to be, a Nobel-Prize-winning scientist dedicated to helping victims recover more quickly from disasters.”
“Well, there are disasters, and then there are disasters, now aren’t there.” Mrs. French sniffed. “It seems to me that you weren’t merely dealing with rising floodwaters and toxic runoff in that cute little resort in Bali. You had two village leaders with bullets in their brains. That seems like a disaster of an entirely different magnitude.”
I quirked a tired smile. She wasn’t wrong. “According to police reports and the resort security camera footage, the death of those leaders was the result of a drug deal gone bad a few hours before the storm hit. Nobody seems to have any video of the actual shooting, just of two figures in resort uniforms who don’t appear to have been employees, stashing the bodies in a cabana far down the beach, nearest to the ocean. The assumption is pretty strong that they intended those two to get washed out to sea during the typhoon.”
“Never let nature clean up your dirty work,” Mrs. French scoffed. “She’s a fickle one, she is. Like as not, she’ll deposit your bad behavior right back on your doorstep.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Further, the tribe had acted with outrage and grief at the realization that their leaders were dead, flat-out rejecting any assertion that they’d been doing anything illegal. Then again, these were people who lived outside the strictures of normal society. What did illegal really mean to them?
And the extra step of eliminating their leaders made a certain sort of sense to me. Lost and confused as they were, the Bali Aga would willingly have gone along with Rindon’s inoculation program, even if I hadn’t been there to ease the way. By the time the floodwaters had receded, so would their magical abilities.
Or at least, that was the suspicion. The Arcana Council’s own lab rats were analyzing the concoction in Rindon’s syringes now. We’d see what kind of cocktail he’d mixed up, and that would get us one step closer.
As it was, Rindon had left the area immediately, heading out for another disaster location, continuing his celebrated worldwide tour as Dr. Good Guy. By then, of course, we’d already done our part. Representatives and advocates for the Connected had made it to each of the disaster locations before Rindon could. Any Connected survivors were quickly and discreetly removed from harm. He’d gone ahead and inoculated everyone left behind, and hadn’t seemed to notice that none of them were Connected. Which again confused me. Was he upset that he hadn’t succeeded in wiping out pockets of Connected ability, or did he not realize he had failed in his mission? Was he even aware of what was in his syringes?
I hadn’t go
tten the sense that he’d been Connected, but surely he would know a Connected when he saw one, right? I rubbed a hand over my forehead. Then again, maybe it didn’t matter. If he was inoculating one and all, his null-tech cocktails would go virtually undetected. It wasn’t as if anyone would be scanning for Connected ability before and after the injections.
If what I feared was true, though, it made him virtually untouchable. I could simply remove him, remanding him over to Judgment’s tender mercies. But if I had no indication, no complaint against him, nothing but my own concern…was that enough to subject him to abduction and interrogation? Wouldn’t that make me every bit as vile as the Shadow Court?
I think I preferred it when being so adult about my responsibilities wasn’t quite so important.
“Let’s get you out of all these shadows, then,” Mrs. French said, reaching out to dust me off with neat, efficient movements. “You’ve got guests waiting to speak to you, both of them quite certain that you’re hiding in here merely to avoid them.”
I slowed, my innate sense of self-protection kicking in.
“Guests? Like who?”
“Right now, it’s only Detective Brody. Such a nice man. I will say he needs a new suit, if you don’t mind my opinion, but he stayed on even after that incorrigible Nikki Dawes left. She said something about going out for breakfast for the lot of us, but I’ve known her long enough to know that what she comes back with will hardly be healthy. I arranged to have a hot meal sent up once I realized you were back here in the stacks. I rather hoped the good detective would nap for a bit while I came back here to find you, but he had that red-eyed look I’ve seen often enough in law enforcement. He worries all the time. Poor man.”
I frowned as I considered Mrs. French’s words, my concern only deepening as we stepped out of the library and into the main lobby of Justice Hall. Sure enough, Brody sat on the edge of the couch, ignoring the fluffy blanket neatly folded up beside him, a gift, no doubt, of Mrs. French, along with the tidy travel pillow positioned on top of it. He ignored both, instead leaning forward to stare at a pile of paperwork spread out on the coffee table. A large mug of coffee sat steaming by his elbow, also untouched. However, I could tell by the tremor in Brody’s fingers as he reached for another file folder that he already had plenty of caffeine onboard.