by Sarah Noffke
Hiker hadn’t seemed surprised when Sophia discovered it.
“Idiots love to put their names on things. Like they are going to forget who they are after a night of drinking whiskey,” he had explained.
“So,” Evan said, drawing out the word as he doubled the belt over and slapped it into his hand. “Rhett Wren. What a horrible name. It was like your parents wanted everyone to stutter your name.”
“Rut rho,” Sophia muttered, finally saying the joke that had sprung to her mind when she first heard the prisoner’s name.
Evan glanced at her, confusion on his face. “What?”
“It’s a Scooby Doo reference,” Rhett Wren told him dryly, giving Sophia an annoyed expression. “I have heard it before.”
“Yet, you were dumb enough to put your stupid name on your belt,” Sophia taunted from the other side of the bars.
“I’m proud of my name,” he grumbled, his fingers flexing in the restraints.
“The only name I care about, maggot eater, is the person you work for,” Evan threatened, pushing his face close to the prisoners, apparently unafraid he would get spit on like Hiker.
Rhett, to Sophia’s surprise, didn’t launch any saliva onto Evan’s dark face, probably because he was slapping the would-be weapon they had taken off the prisoner in his hands.
“I already told you, I don’t know their name,” Rhett said, his cyborg eye glowing in the dark cell.
“Then tell me how you know her,” Evan demanded.
“She recruited me,” he replied simply.
Evan grinned and stepped back. He glanced at Sophia. “Now we know Wiry Hair is the leader.”
She nodded. It was progress. She had assumed the leader of the band of cyborg pirates was the woman with the retractable hand who had stolen the dragon egg and escaped via blimp, but it was good to get a confirmation.
Rhett narrowed his human eye at Evan. “Oh good, after hours of this, you finally got some information. Feel adequate, dragonrider, since the world hates you.”
Evan pulled back the belt, about to lash the pirate.
Sophia jerked up her hand and restrained him using magic. Evan’s arm froze in mid-air, the belt suspended after it whipped backward.
Evan glared at Sophia, giving her an expression that spoke acutely of his disapproval of her restricting him from harming the prisoner. “Seriously, girl.”
She shook her head. “You heard what Hiker said. We aren’t going to inflict violence on them. Use your magic to torture him mentally. Use your words. But you are not going to use force.”
Evan sighed. “Fine. Will you release me?”
Sophia did, and Evan’s hand shot forward, the belt landing across the man’s torso, making a metallic sound. He didn’t even flinch but rather grinned at Evan. “Benefits of being made of mostly metal.”
Evan shook his head, backing away.
“Evan,” Sophia said, a warning in her voice.
“What?” he complained. “I was already wound up. When you released me, there was no stopping the attack.”
She opened the cell door and encouraged him to exit. “I don’t think you can restrain yourself. Take over disabling their cyborg powers. I want to try something.”
Evan stepped out of the cell, belt still in hand. “Okay, but no more talkie-talkie. It’s time to graduate to other methods.”
Sophia nodded and leaned forward to whisper in Evan’s ear so only he could hear her. “Shield yourself as well as restrict them.”
Understanding flashed in his eyes.
Sophia felt her magic released when Evan took over for her.
She lowered her chin to her chest and closed her eyes and sent out a signal. Almost immediately, screaming filled the air. All three prisoners were suddenly wailing as if in excruciating pain. They weren’t. Sophia wasn’t about to disobey Hiker, mostly because she agreed with him. The strong didn’t use force to get what they wanted. They used strategy.
Each of the men was being inundated with images that would scare them most, whatever was specific for each of them. The chains rattled violently from the walls as they jerked, writhing as if in physical pain. Rhett’s feet dropped out from under him, and he hung awkwardly from his restraints.
“Trin,” he groaned, drool running down his chin as his eyes remained closed.
Sophia stopped the spell and stepped close to the bars. “What did you say?”
The prisoner heaved all over the stone floor, instantly filling the air with a putrid smell.
“Oh, man,” Evan complained. “Gross.”
Sophia gave him an irritated glance. They were making progress.
“Tell me what you said, or I will keep torturing you the same as before,” Sophia threatened.
“Trin Currante,” one of the other prisoners groaned behind her.
She turned to face the cell holding a cyborg with a busted nose and scratches down his face. He had tumbled down the hill when Hiker fought him, and it had bloodied him badly.
“Trin Currante,” Sophia repeated. “What is that?”
“Who,” the man sputtered between breaths. “The woman you are looking for. Our boss.”
Sophia looked at Evan before redirecting her gaze to the pirate with large black goggles strapped around his head. “Tell me more.”
“I-I-I don’t know much,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to dispel the images she had forced into his head.
The spell had been extremely taxing to do on all three men at once. Sophia hoped she didn’t have to do it again because it probably wouldn’t work.
Faking confidence, she pursed her lips at Evan. “Looks like I get to send their worst nightmares back into their head.”
“Do it, princess,” he encouraged.
“No!” Rhett yelled from his cell. “I will talk. I will tell you what you want to know, but there isn’t much. Trin saw to that.”
“Go on then,” Evan ordered sternly.
“She used the blimp to search Scotland and find this place when the Barrier came down,” Rhett explained in a rush. “We were sent in via portal and told to attack you all until she swooped in. That is all I know. I promise.”
“I don’t know, Pink Princess,” Evan complained, shaking his head. “I don’t think we can believe him. See if you can jog his memory a bit.”
“That is all we know!” the other prisoner behind them yelled. “We weren’t given a location. She recruited us and sent us messages about the mission.”
“How?” Sophia asked.
“Internal messages,” he explained, his breath rattling in his chest as much as the chains binding him. “Us particular cyborgs have visual message centers. It displays information over our cortexes.”
“What do you mean, ‘Us particular cyborgs’?” Evan questioned, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“We were made at a specific facility,” he answered. “We all have functions.”
“Facility?” Sophia questioned. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s shut down now,” Rhett stated, his voice suddenly sounding tired. “It was called the Saverus. Most of us were abducted and changed.”
“You mean, someone kidnapped you all and made you into cyborgs?” Sophia queried.
He nodded roughly.
“By this Trin Currante?” Evan quizzed.
Rhett shook his head. “No, she was one of us. She rescued us. Shut it down. Got rid of the magicians who ran it.”
“And then she enlisted you to help her,” Sophia said, piecing it all together.
“Well, we had to,” Rhett declared. “We owed her. She saved us. We were imprisoned before that.”
“Have you gotten more messages from her since being here at the Gullington?” Sophia was grateful they were making progress. After three hours of interrogation, it appeared she had figured out how to get them to talk.
Rhett groaned suddenly in pain. The other two prisoners joined in, both screaming.
“Hey, you didn’t have to d
o the mental torture thing to them again,” Evan complained, gripping his bandaged side. “I mean, I’m all up for punishing these guys after one of their mates stabbed me, but they were actually talking, and now, well, they’re making a bunch of racket and not talking.”
The men’s moans of pain had grown in volume, making it hard to hear anything else.
Sophia shook her head. “I didn’t do it. I don’t know why they are moaning.”
“T-T-Trin,” Rhett groaned between attempts to breathe.
“What about Trin?” Sophia asked, grabbing the bars of the cell.
“M-m-message,” he stuttered. “She just sent a m-m-message.”
“What?” Sophia questioned at once, her heart beating fast. “What does it say?”
“Ter-term-terminated,” Rhett told them.
Sophia whipped around, her mouth wide open as she gasped at Evan. “What does that mean? ‘Terminated.’ Is she telling them to terminate us?”
His eyes slid to the side as he thought. He shook his head and pointed to the cell across from Rhett’s. “I don’t think so. I think she is telling them what is happening to them.”
Lying on the cold floor of the cell was the cyborg pirate. The chains were barely long enough to allow him to lay flat. His face was to the side, and a puddle of blood spilled out of his mouth.
“What happened to him? What did he do?” Sophia raced over and grabbed the bars, studying the space. There were no weapons or any way she could see that he could have taken his own life.
Evan shook his head. “I don’t think he did anything. Look.” He pointed to Rhett, who looked like he was having a seizure, his head jerking back and forth as he foamed at the mouth. A few seconds later, he fell still against the wall, his eyes wide and unblinking. He was dead.
Sophia ran over to the other cell. The last pirate was the same as the others. They were all dead. Something had killed them, and she was assuming it was the person in their head. The Dragon Elite’s new enemy—Trin Currante.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Hiker Wallace paced across his office, which looked a lot more like it did back when Sophia had first shown up, and the Castle was punishing the leader of the Dragon Elite. Most of the books were strewn onto the floor or lying sideways on the shelves. The long bank of windows facing the Pond was cracked, and his desk looked ready to fall apart at any moment. When the Castle had fallen, everything inside of it had too, slipping into disrepair.
“Trin Currante,” he said for the tenth time, his eyes off in thought.
“Do you know the name?” Sophia asked, looking sideways at Wilder, who sat on the other side of the couch, seemingly distracted through the impromptu meeting.
Hiker shook his head. “I have never heard it.”
Sophia glanced at Mama Jamba, who was peering out the window and humming under her breath the Stevie Wonder song, “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”
Sophia thought asking Mother Nature about the new villain was probably a long shot. She opened her mouth and was immediately interrupted by the old woman.
“Of course, I know about her, but I can’t tell you anything, dear,” Mama Jamba said, answering her question before she asked it. “Not anything of use anyway. She was born a normal magician, and as you witnessed, she isn’t one anymore. She is a cyborg like the others who invaded the Gullington.”
“But they were abducted,” Evan stated, shaking his head. His hair was starting to grow out again after his electrocution in the caves to the north, and he was already working to put the coarse black hair into dreads.
Sophia nodded. “It sounds like, to me, that some organization—”
“This Saverus,” Mahkah supplied.
“Yeah,” she affirmed. “This Saverus organization abducted a bunch of magicians and turned them into cyborgs.”
“Probably using that repugnant magitech Thad Reinhart perfected,” Hiker said bitterly.
“It looks like we aren’t done with Thad yet then,” Evan said with a cold laugh.
Hiker paused his pacing, a resentful look on his face. “Not by a long shot. I should have realized my brother’s legacy would stretch well after him. Who knows, this Saverus organization might have been one of his.”
“That could have been how he figured out how to bring his dragon, Ember back,” Sophia offered. “He might have experimented on humans first.”
Hiker didn’t seem convinced. “It’s hard to know. We need more information.”
“Well, according to the prisoners, this Trin Currante ended the organization,” Sophia explained. “Then she rescued these men and recruited them for this mission to storm into the Gullington.”
“There are still so many questions,” Mahkah noted, his eyes low and his injured hand in his lap, wrapped in bandages.
If the Castle were its usual self, it would have healed his finger, making it grow back. It would have mended Evan too, so he didn’t suck in a sharp breath when he had to twist or move. As it was, they were healing faster than most, but not as fast as the Dragon Elite were accustomed to.
“Yeah, like how did Trin Currante kill all three of the prisoners remotely?” Sophia mused.
“She knew we had them,” Hiker pointed out. “She must have hacked into something in their brain set up by the Saverus organization.”
Everyone in the room, including Mama Jamba, turned and gawked at Hiker, shocked he would make such an observation and use so many technical terms.
He brought up his shoulders as he tensed from all the attention. “What?”
“Sir, that was quite the observation,” Sophia declared.
The leader of the Dragon Elite shrugged. “I have been studying up on things since the Thad business.” He pointed at the laptop Sophia had set up for him. “I have been reading things on this thing.”
“What you say makes a lot of sense,” Sophia began. “It sounds like this Saverus installed something into the cyborgs' brains to send them messages. Trin Currante figured out how to access it after getting rid of the organization. It goes to reason she figured out a lot more, like if there was a ‘kill switch’ of sorts. I’m guessing she has the main control panel for these cyborgs and can use it to her advantage.”
“Okay, now I’m back to being lost,” Hiker said. “I didn’t understand a lot of what you said.”
Sophia nodded sympathetically. He was trying, although Wilder still thought he was holding back a great deal of his strength. Sophia didn’t blame him.
“When this Trin Currante realized they were our prisoners,” Evan started, “she flipped the kill switch and ended them so they wouldn’t give up any information on her.”
“Thankfully, I think we figured out most of it before she cut them off,” Sophia said, still feeling heavy after witnessing the three men’s deaths.
Yes, they had been trespassers who served as a threat to the Dragon Elite, but they were humans. No matter if someone was good or not, witnessing their death should still take a toll on anyone who valued human life. Otherwise, what is the point of having a soul at all?
“Okay, so the first question,” Hiker said, his words came slowly as he worked things out in his mind. “We need to find out who this Saverus organization is and what they did.”
“They seem like a corrupt organization,” Sophia proclaimed.
“Yes, but I think what they created is somehow worse now. Understanding motivation is key, so we need to learn as much about the Saverus as possible.” He turned his attention to Wilder. “I want you to go and dig up as much as you can about this place.”
Wilder gave him a reluctant expression. “Although I would like to, sir—”
Hiker threw his hands to his head. “Don’t tell me you have a mission for Subner. Not now.”
Wilder bit his lip as his gaze fell to the floor. “Okay, I won’t tell you anything.”
“He has to go,” Mama Jamba sang, still swaying by the windows and dancing to the music in her head.
Hiker spun to face the woman. “Wh
at are you going on about?”
Unhurried, she turned and pointed at Wilder. “He has a mission, and the timing is awful for us. But he must do it.”
Hiker glanced between Wilder and Mama Jamba and shook his head. “Our home has been invaded. Nearly destroyed. It’s only holding up now because you took pity on us, Mama.”
“It wasn’t pity,” she amended. “I simply did what had to be done to save my riders. At the end of the day, though, you will have to save yourself. I just bought you some time. I get you need every available person for this and you are not working with much. But son, now you are working with less.”
“Less?” Hiker questioned. “I have one rider who can hardly move, let alone ride.” He pointed at Evan, who grimaced, holding his side.
“I’m good, sir,” he said. “I can ride as long there is no wind, and Coral moves slowly. And there are no complications. And I’m heavily drugged.”
“You see!” Hiker bellowed, turned back to Mama Jamba. “And there is Mahkah. He lost fingers.”
Mama Jamba offered the rider a sympathetic expression. “I’m sorry about that. But no one ever said you needed all your digits to get a job done.”
“I can help, sir,” Mahkah offered. “I’m happy to go on a reconnaissance mission for you.”
Hiker waved him off, still glaring at Mama Jamba. “I have got to figure out what is wrong with the Castle and fix it, so I can fix my riders. I have to find out everything on this Trin Currante, Saverus, and what their connection is. And then we’ve got to get back our egg. Not to mention, we’ve got to guard this place when the Barrier comes down.”
Mama Jamba shook her head and clicked her tongue. “You have got your work cut out for you, son. I’m not sure why you are here going on about things when you have so much to do.”
“Because,” he complained, throwing his arm back in Wilder’s direction. “You are telling me it’s okay one of my riders has a mission he has to go off on, and I’m certain I can’t know a thing about it.”